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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


This  ' 


SOUTHERN  BRANCH, 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 

LIBRARY, 

(LOS  ANGfcLES,  CALIF. 


THE  N.  E.  A. 
PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

WITH   A   REVIEW   OF   THE 
WHIPPLE   EXPERIMENTS 


BY 

RAYMOND   WEEKS 

JAMES  W.   BRIGHT        CHARLES  H.  GRANDGENT 


\     i      »'      j 


THE   NEW   ERA    PRINTING   COMPANY 

LANCASTER,   PA. 

1912 


1 
I .  I 


z, 


i 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 

The  experiments  with  the  N.  E.  A.  phonetic  key  alphabet,  con- 
ducted by  Assistant  Professor  Whipple,  of  the  Cornell  Psychological 
Laboratory,  reported  by  him  in  a  pamphlet  recently  issued,  have  had, 
with  some  people  interested  in  the  adoption  of  a  scientific  phonetic 
alphabet,  an  influence  so  out  of  proportion  to  their  value  and  signifi- 
cance, that  it  seemed  a  possible  service  to  the  cause  of  education  if  one 
were  to  point  out  the  inadequacy  of  Dr.  Whipple's  tests.  The  occasion 
has  been  made  use  of  to  suggest  also  some  of  the  larger,  more  serious 
aspects  of  the  problem.  These  may  appeal  to  the  schoolmen  and 
educators  who,  as  members  of  the  N.  E.  A.,  are  directly  interested 
and  concerned  in  the  success  of  the  alphabet,  and  aid  them  to  recog- 
nize the  advantages  that  may  be  secured  to  American  schools  by  the 
adoption  (A  a  scientific  phonetic  alphabet  for  educational  purposes. 

Three  appendixes  offer  information  and  some  suggestions  perti- 
nent to  the  discussion. 

January  22,  1912. 


THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

In  November,  1911,  appeared  a  pamphlet  entitled  "Relative 
Efficiency  of  Phonetic  Alphabets"  (Baltimore:  Warwick  &  York, 
Inc.),  by  Assistant  Professor  Guy  Montrose  Whipple,  giving  the 
results  of  a  series  of  experiments  in  the  Educational  Laboratory  of 
Cornell  University,  to  test  the  relative  merits  of  one  of  the  key- 
alphabets  in  popular  use  (the  Webster  key)  and  the  Proposed  Key 
of  the  N.  E.  A.  Committee  of  the  Department  of  Superintendence, 
recommended  by  action  of  the  Department  of  Superintendence  at 
Mobile,  February,  1911,  to  the  National  Education  Association  at 
its  annual  session  last  July.  Dr.  Whipple  has  "no  hesitation  in  de- 
claring that  the  key  proposed  by  the  Committee  of  the  National 
Education  Association  is  inferior  for  pedagogical  purposes  to  the 
Webster  Key  now  in  common  use." 

Inasmuch  as  this  pamphlet  from  an  expert  in  psychology  must 
be  felt  by  many  to  offer  scientific  support  to  the  objections  that 
have  appeared  in  a  number  of  school  journals,  it  may  not  be  out  of 
place  (I)  1)  to  restate  the  opinions  and  aims  of  those  who  favor  the 
general  introduction  of  a  simple,  rational,  and  scientific  phonetic 
alphabet,  2)  to  point  out  the  deficiencies  of  keys  of  the  Webster 
kind  for  really  effective  work,  whether  in  primary  or  more  advanced 
language  study,  and  3)  to  indicate  what  place  phonetics,  and  the 
use  of  a  phonetic  alphabet,  play  in  the  remarkable  advance  of 
training  in  the  living  languages  that  has  during  the  last  generation 
been  made  throughout  Europe;  and  then  (II)  to  point  out  how  far 
from  conclusive  and  in  fact  how  misleading  at  times  are  the  results 
reached  by  Dr.  Whipple. 


One  would  think  that  the  overwhelming  philological  and  phonetic 
authority  behind  the  movement  to  adopt  a  scientific  alphabet  for 
general  phonetic  use  would  in  the  mind  of  a  scientifically  trained 
man  of  whatever  other  field  of  scholarship  raise  doubt  of  the  sound- 

5 


6  THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

ness  of  the  ground  upon  which  opposition  to  such  a  key  took  its 
stand.  And  it  perhaps  required  some  courage  on  the  part  of  Dr. 
Whipple  to  put  himself  on  record  as  aligned  with  various  other  in- 
fluences against  the  sense  of  all  American  and  English  philological 
and  phonetic  scholarship. 

There  is  not  a  reputable  American  or  English  philologist  or 
phonetician  that  does  not  advocate  the  universal  adoption  of  a 
scientific  phonetic  key,  and  declare  a  key  of  the  Webster  kind  unfit 
for  scientific  uses.* 

There  are  no  indications  in  his  pamphlet  that  Dr.  Whipple  is 
conscious  of  this  weight  of  expert  opinion  in  favor  of  a  scientific  key. 
But  a  brief  review  of  the  movement  will  enlighten  anyone  on  that 
point,  and  will  reveal  further  the  unanimity  of  aim  and  method  in 
the  actions  of  the  associations  that  have  joined  in  the  reform. 

(1) 
Origin  op  the  N.  E.  A.  Alphabet 

The  movement  began  in  1877,  when  the  American  Philological 
Association  agreed  upon  an  alphabet,  the  distinguishing  features  of 
which  were  the  use  of  the  vowel  letters  a  e  i  o  u  in  their 
Latin  values,  and  the  addition  of  three  new  forms  a  e  u  .  There 
were  thus  eight  vowel  symbols,  aaeioeuuf,  which, 
marked  (with  a  macron  or  otherwise),  represented  the  long  vowels 
heard  in  the  words  art  air  they  eve  note  north  rude  burn ; 
unmarked,  they  represented  corresponding  short  vowels.  To  make 
the  alphabet  easy  of  adoption  for  popular  use,  some  consonant  signs 
were  retained  that  were  later  discarded,  such  as  c  as  an  alterna- 
tive to  k ,  q  and  x  as  alternatives  to  kw  and  ks ,  and 
certain  digraphs. 

After  this  first  step  the  movement  in  this  country  for  half  a 

*  The  list  of  experts  who,  as  members  of  the  various  committees,  worked 
together  to  reach  a  common  basis  that  should  be  at  once  rational,  scientific,  and 
practical,  is  given  in  Appendix  I  (page  83),  and  their  professional  standing  may 
be  learned  from  Who's  Who.  The  list  ought  to  impress  every  intelligent  man 
with  the  presumptive  good  sense  of  their  conclusions. 

t  This  symbol  u  ,  for  the  vowels  heard  in  bum  and  but,  is  in  some  publications 
given  the  form  of  a  small  capital  v.     The  original  form,  however,  is  the  better. 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  7 

generation  appeared  to  make  little  progress;  *  but  the  leaven  was 
working.  With  the  further  development  of  the  science  of  phonetics, 
and  a  consequent  significant  change  in  the  methods  and  aims  of 
language  study,  a  need  was  felt  throughout  a  wider  educational 
circle  for  a  rational  scientific  alphabet  precise  enough  for  elemen- 
tary instruction  in  phonetics  and  simple  enough  for  the  widest  pop- 
ular use.  The  Department  of  Superintendence  of  the  N.  E.  A.  took 
the  initiative  in  calling  a  conference  in  Boston  in  1903,  in  which 
representatives  from  the  N.  E.  A.,  the  American  Philological  Asso- 
ciation, and  the  Modern  Language  Association  took  part.f  The 
conference  at  once  accepted  the  1877  alphabet  as  right  in  principle 
and  as  satisfactory  in  most  of  its  details,  and  appointed  a  Joint 
Committee  from  the  three  associations  to  prepare  a  report  that 
should  embody  the  aim  of  the  conference.  That  aim  was  "to  agree 
upon  and  promote  the  general  adoption  of  the  best  set  of  alphabetic 
symbols  to  be  used  in  dictionaries  and  text-books  for  the  accurate 
denotation  of  the  sounds  heard  in  English  speech." 

The  report  of  this  Joint  Committee,  adopted  after  exhaustive 
study,  and  published  in  the  fall  of  1904,  gave  a  careful  review  of 
the  details  of  the  problem,  and  submitted  an  alphabet  for  acceptance 
by  the  three  associations.  The  revised  alphabet  was  again  con- 
sidered by  a  committee  of  the  A.  P.  A.  and  the  M.  L.  A.,  and  later 
by  a  committee  of  the  Department  of  Superintendence.  The  final 
revision  by  these  committees  took  two  directions.  The  former 
body  changed  the  value  of  the  sign  a  in  order  to  give  the  symbol 
its  original  significance — the  vowel  sound  in  art,  introduced  the 
ligature  se  from  old  English  manuscripts  to  represent  the  value 
of  a  heard  in  bat,  and  substituted  j  for  the  y-sound  heard 
in  you ;  they  chose  the  forms  tj"  and  dg  for  ch  as  in  church 
and  j  as  in  judge,  allowing  no  alternatives ;  they  preferred  ju  to 
iu  as  the  more  exact  representative  of  the  sound  of  "long  u."  These 
changes  were  felt  to  be,  in  the  main,  in  the  direction  of  greater  sim- 
plicity and  greater  historical  accuracy.     The  N.  E.  A.  committee, 

*  A  modification  of  the  alphabet  was  used  in  the  Funk  &  Wagnalls  Standard 
Dictionary,  1890. 

t  The  American  Dialect  Society,  and  the  U.  S.  Geographical  Bureau,  as  well 
as  various  scientific  and  official  bodies  in  England,  had  already  acted  upon  the 
lines  of  the  Philological  Association's  reform,  and  had  adopted  similar  "scientific" 
alphabets. 


8  THE  N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

on  the  other  hand,  retained  the  use  of  a  as  the  symbol  for  the 
vowel  sound  in  art,  and  a  for  the  vowel  of  bat  (in  agreement  here 
with  international  usage),  used  sh  and  dh  for  the  consonants 
of  she  and  church,  instead  of  the  M.  L.  and  A.  P.  J  and 
tj ,  fh  and  th  for  the  M.  L.-A.  P.  p  and  5 .  That  is,  the 
N.  E.  A.  changes  were  in  the  direction  of  rendering  the  new  alphabet 
no  more  strange  to  an  eye  accustomed  to  English  spellings  than  was 
absolutely  necessary. 

These  two  guiding  principles,  that  the  alphabet  should  be  his- 
torically and  scientifically  justified,  and  that  it  should  be  also 
feasible  for  popular  use,  were  the  principles  that  the  committees 
kept  before  themselves.  The  former  necessarily  was  dominant; 
the  latter,  based  upon  expediency,  was  subordinate,  but  was  given 
full  consideration. 

The  following  table  shows  the  detailed  relations  of  the  three  alpha- 
bets, that  of  the  Joint  Committee,  and  those  of  the  M.  L.-A.  P.  and 
the  N.  E.  A.  committees  on  revision. 

Only  the  vowel  and  the  divergent  consonant  symbols  are  here 
given;  there  is  no  difference  of  opinion  about  the  other  symbols: 

Key  Word  Joint  Com.     M.  L.-A.  P.      N.  E.  A. 

art d 

artistic a 

aisle,  find ai 

out,  thou au 

ask a 

air,  care a 

at a 

chew -c,  t J 

prey e 

men e 

marine,  eve i 

tin i 

mute iu 

jaw j,  dg 

sing rj 

note 6 

poetic o 


a 

a 

a 

a 

ai 

ai 

au 

au 

a 

a 

£e 

a 

ee 

a 

tj 

dh 

A 

e 

e 

e 

e 

A 

1 

i 

i 

i 

ju  (iu) 

iu 

d3 

i 

rj 

rj 

6 

o 

o 

o 

THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  9 

Key  Word  Joint  Com.     M.  L.-A.  P.      N.  E.  A. 

nor e  e  e 

not e  e  e 

oil ei  ei  ei 

ship J  J  sh 

thin p  p  fh 

that d  8  th 

mood u  u  u 

push u  u  u 

urge 0  u  u 

hut u  u  u 

yes,  you y  j  y 

azure 3  3  3 

about  ) 

> 3  a  a 

over     j 

candid  ") 

added    f 


In  this  table,  symbols  separated  by  a  comma  (e.  g.,  •€  ,  tj )  are  sub- 
mitted as  optional;  either  may  be  used.  In  the  second  column,  iu 
is  not  an  alternative  of  ju  ,  but  is  intended  to  represent  a  slightly 
different  pronunciation.  In  the  case  of  ask  path  pass  etc.,  the 
prevailing  vowel  in  the  south  of  England  is  that  of  art ,  in  the 
greater  part  of  the  United  States  that  of  man  .  Some  speakers  in 
both  countries  avoid  both  sounds,  and  the  intermediate  value  that 
they  give  the  vowel  is  meant  to  be  represented  by  the  new  symbol 
a  of  the  Joint  Committee.  That  symbol  may  remind  some 
readers  of  the  difference  between  American  and  English  usage;  but 
it  is  open  to  question  whether  it  would  not  be  better  for  our  dic- 
tionaries to  recognize  the  prevailing  American  usage  and  respell 
ask  pass  path  etc.  with  a  as  in  the  case  of  at  am  bat 
etc.,  allowing  as  an  alternative  the  symbol  d  (as  in  English 
usage).  If  that  were  done,  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  could  drop  the 
symbol    a. 

The  alphabets  (M.  L.-A.  P.  and  N.  E.  A.)  now  offered  for  approval 
have  undergone  repeated  scrutiny  and  most  minute  consideration 
by  the  foremost  philological,  phonetic,  and  educational  scholarship 
of  the  country.     It  is  true  that  they  differ  slightly  from  each  other, 


10  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

and  a  little  more  from  that  adopted  by  leading  English  philologists 
(as,  for  example,  in  the  great  Oxford  Dictionary),  and  from  the  In- 
ternational Phonetic  Alphabet.  But  the  emphasis  laid  by  oppo- 
nents of  the  reform  upon  the  lack  of  uniformity  among  these  various 
scientific  bodies  could  come  only  from  persons  that  have  not  been 
observant  enough  to  recognize  either  the  essential  agreement  of  all 
these  alphabets  upon  a  common  basis,  a  common  method,  and  a 
common  aim,  or  the  ease  with  which  any  one  who  has  an  elementary 
knowledge  of  phonetics  can  pass  from  one  to  another. 

Within  eight  years  the  N.  E.  A.,  the  M.  L.  A.,  and  the  A.  P.  A. 
have  reached  substantial  agreement. 


(2) 
Objections  to  the  Webster  Key 

What  led  these  three  associations  into  a  common  effort  to  con- 
struct a  scientific  alphabet  and  secure  its  general  adoption  for 
phonetic  work,  including  that  in  dictionaries  and  school  books,  was 
the  utter  unfitness  for  such  work  of  the  several  phonetic  keys  then 
more  or  less  used.  The  basis  of  those  keys,  namely,  the  English 
alphabet  names  and  English  pronunciation  values  of  the  letters,  was 
unscientific,  unstable,  and  misleading.  On  the  ground  of  expe- 
diency they  might  have  for  a  limited  clientele  and  within  a  limited 
field  some  claim  to  consideration.  It  may  be  argued  that  a  child 
in  the  mere  process  of  learning  to  say  the  alphabet  and  to  read  and 
spell  simple  English  words  becomes  accustomed  to  using  some  of 
the  letters  in  the  phonetic  values  assigned  to  them  in  such  keys; 
that  the  eye  of  the  child  becomes  more  or  less  familiar  with  some 
combinations  of  these  letters,  and  he  can  therefore  later  learn  to 
use  them  as  phonetic  signs  with  somewhat  less  effort  than  he  can 
learn  signs  wholly  new  in  form.  However,  even  if  the  like  were 
true  of  all  the  characters  in,  for  example,  the  Webster  key,  there 
would  still  remain  a  question  of  the  economy  of  using  that  key. 
"If  you  were  going  to  buy  a  watch  to  last  you  a  lifetime,  you  would 
not  make  the  choice  turn  on  whether  the  dealer's  shop  were  five 
blocks  away  or  six." 

A  phonetic  alphabet  should  be  consistent  in  its  elements,  and 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  11 

precise  enough  for  its  purpose.  For  popular  use  it  must  be  also 
simple  and  easy  to  learn. 

It  may  be  worth  while,  for  those  who  have  not  fully  considered 
the  matter,  to  point  out  why  such  a  key  as  the  Webster  is  felt  to 
be  "unscientific"  and  unadapted  for  use  in  serious  phonetic  work, 
even  of  an  elementary  kind. 

Its  defects  are  the  same  in  kind  as  those  of  the  conventional 
spelling.  To  some  extent  in  German,  more  so  in  French,  most  so 
in  English,  conventional  spelling  is  a  hindrance  in  the  study  of  the 
sounds  of  these  languages.  To  illustrate  by  English  vowel  spell- 
ings, a  given  letter  does  not  stand  uniformly  for  a  given  sound 
( take  tack  tart  talk  culpable ) ;  a  given  sound  is  not  uni- 
formly represented  by  a  given  symbol  ( ate  bait  bay  gaol 
gauge  great  feign  they  ).  Combinations  of  letters  represent  not 
compound  but  simple  sounds,  and  sometimes  one  may  say  that 
neither  of  the  letters  forming  the  combination  is  a  proper  sign  for 
the  sound  ( laugh  meat  great  head  conceive  relieve  sieve 
though  ought  fraught  fool ).  Other  letter-groups  stand  for 
combined  sounds  made  up  of  elements  other  than  those  represented 
by  the  letters  involved  ( thou  now  oil  beauty  ).  Simple  char- 
acters stand  for  diphthonged  sounds     (  mite     mw     mute  ). 

No  phonetician  would  for  a  moment  think  of  teaching  English 
sounds  by  means  of  English  spellings.  The  inconsistencies  and 
contradictions  would  utterly  confuse  and  confound  the  learner. 

The  like  must  be  said  of  any  key  of  the  Webster  kind. 

1.  The  Webster  key,  even  in  its  latest  and  best  form  (it  has  been 
considerably  altered  with  each  revision  of  the  dictionary),  uses  a 
given  letter  (with  varying  diacritics,  it  is  true)  to  represent  radically 
different  vowels  (a  as  in  ale,  a  as  in  at;  e  as  in  eve,  e  as 
in  met;  I  as  in  bible,  I  as  in  bit).  The  words  here  are  not 
rationally  paired:  the  long  of  the  vowel  in  at  does  not  appear  in  ale 
but  in  care;  the  long  of  the  vowel  in  met  is  not  that  of  meet  but  is 
nearer  that  of  mate;  the  vowel  heard  in  bit  does  not,  when  lengthened, 
become  the  diphthong  of  bible,  but  approximates  the  vowel  heard  in 
bean.  If  the  symbol  a  represents  the  vowel  heard  in  ale,  it 
should  not  elsewhere  represent  some  other  vowel. 

2.  The  Webster  key  does  not  represent  a  given  sound  uniformly 
by  a  given  symbol.     The  first  element  of  the  diphthongs  heard  in 


12  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

ice  and  out  is  the  vowel  a  of  art;  but  in  the  Webster  respellings 
that  vowel  is  not  at  all  represented  in  the  one  diphthong  symbol 
( I ),  and  in  the  other  ( ou  )  it  is  misrepresented  as  if  it  were  the 
vowel  of  note. 

3.  In  the  Webster  key  certain  double  letters  stand  for  simple 
vowels:  oo  and  do  for  the  vowels  of  pool  and  pull.  The 
vowels  here  are  approximately  the  same  sound,  long  in  the  one  word, 
short  in  the  other  (N.  E.  A.  u  and  u  ,  respectively);  in  neither 
case  is     o     a  proper  symbol. 

4.  The  Webster  key  uses  simple  characters  for  diphthonged 
sounds;  for  example,  i  for  the  diphthong  in  bible  (  "ah-ee"  or 
"ah-i,"  i  e.,  ai ).  If  the  word  were  respelled  with  the  Webster 
characters  for  "ah"  and  "i" — as,  to  be  consistent,  it  should  be — 
the  phonetic  form  would  be  baib'l  .*  Or  take  Webster  u  as  in 
mute:  if  this  word  were  respelled  consistently,  that  is,  in  the  Web- 
ster characters  that  represent  its  phonetic  content,  the  form  would 
be    myoot  ! 

5.  In  English,  all  vowels  in  lightly  stressed  or  unstressed  sylla- 
bles have  become  altered  in  length  or  in  quality  or  in  both.  That 
is  a  historical  phenomenon  of  language.  The  result  in  present- 
day  English  is  generally  an  "obscure"  vowel  which,  whatever  its 
original  quality,  approaches  in  quality  the  vowel  of  but,  or,  much 
more  rarely,  that  in  bit.  These  sounds  are  well  defined  vowels,  and 
have  as  much  independent  existence  as  any  other.  Only  in  the 
most  deliberate  enunciation,  as  that  of  syllable  by  syllable,  a  pro- 
nunciation that  would  seem  affected  in  even  the  most  dignified  and 
careful  speech,  is  any  of  the  original  vowel  heard.  We  are  unac- 
quainted with  any  scientific  alphabet  of  medium  precision  which 
recognizes  more  than  two  obscure  vowels.  For  every  practical 
purpose,  then,  two  characters  should  be  sufficient  for  the  "obscure" 
vowels  in  English  (as  the  symbols  a  and  l  in  the  N.  E.  A." 
alphabet).  In  the  Webster  key  four  wholly  different  devices  ap- 
pear: (1)  A  dot  above  the  phonetic  symbol  of  the  full  vowel,  as  in 
prelate  event  anatomy  formulate  ;  (2)  a  change  to  an  italic 
form,   with  breve,   as  in     infant     recent     control     circumstance  ; 

*  Consistency  is  at  times  synonymous  with  honesty.  What  is  to  be  thought  of 
the  man  that  cites  this  particular  word  to  stir  up  the  prejudices  of  his  hearer 
against  a  consistent  phonetic  respelling  and  in  favor  of  his  own  inconsistent  form? 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  13 

(3)  italic  form  with  dot  over  the  letter,  as  in  dbout  ;  (4)  a  tilde 
over  the  letter,  as  in  inference  .  That  is,  the  two  "obscure" 
vowels  are  represented  by  ten  symbols!  In  fact,  on  the  Webster 
basis,  there  ought  to  be  eleven  symbols;  one  should  be  added, 
namely,     I     for  the  second  vowel  in  limit. 

When  one  reflects  upon  the  confusion  in  the  Webster  treatment 
of  the  "obscure"  vowels — upon  the  use  of  ten  symbols  for  two 
sounds,  and  the  difficulty  of  learning  them  all;  upon  the  use  of  some 
of  these  symbols  now  for  the  one  (  a  )  and  now  for  the  other  ( l ) 
vowel,  and  the  consequent  impossibility  of  ever  learning  to  asso- 
ciate unfailingly  one  specific  sound  with  one  specific  symbol;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  upon  the  simple  and  adequate  handling  of  the 
matter  in  the  N.  E.  A.  system,  namely,  two  plain  symbols  for  the 
two  vowels — one  can  not  help  asking  one's  self  what  motives  led  the 
experimenter  to  exclude,  as  we  shall  see  he  did,  this  part  of  the  two 
keys  from  a  test  supposed  to  demonstrate  which  is  the  better  pho- 
netic key,  which  is  "easier  to  learn,  to  remember,  and  to  apply." 

In  explanation,  Dr.  Whipple  (footnote,  p.  5)  says:  "It  should 
also  be  borne  in  mind  that  in  this  experiment  only  those  Webster 
symbols  are  used  that  correspond  in  power  to  the  symbols  of  the 
Proposed  Key.  There  are  other  symbols  in  the  Webster  Key  used 
to  indicate  finer  distinctions  in  sound,  for  which  the  committee  has 
proposed  no  corresponding  symbols.  These  other  symbols  were 
necessarily  disregarded  to  insure  comparable  conditions."  * 

The  "other  symbols"  here  referred  to  were  either  the  symbols 
for  certain  sounds  in  foreign  words  (Webster  ii  k  n  )  or  those 
for  the  obscure  vowels.  Dr.  Whipple's  words  must  refer  to  the 
latter.  But  no  one  who  knows  anything  of  English  phonetics  and 
of  the  pronunciation  used  by  educated  Englishmen  and  Americans 
of  to-day,  can  explain  Dr.  Whipple's  treatment  of  the  matter  except 
as  that  of  a  man  not  thoroughly  instructed  in  what  he  was  dealing 
with  and  imposed  upon  by  conditions  surrounding  his  task.  In 
fact,  the  first  part  of  the  footnote  just  cited  shows  that  the  experi- 
menter was  not  thoroughly  acquainted  with  his  materials.     He  in- 

*  In  Missouri  some  years  ago  the  state  legislature  passed  a  notorious  partisan 
election  law  for  St.  Louis.  The  St.  Louis  Democratic  "boss"  of  that  time  ex- 
plained that  the  law  was  meant  to  give  his  party  only  "a  fair  advantage"  in  the. 
city  elections. 


14  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

eludes  among  the  Webster  symbols  used  in  the  tests  the  Webster  6 
as  in  maker  and  the  ng  in  sing.  He  says:  "In  the  Proposed 
Key,  apparently  the  only  symbol  that  can  be  used  for  the  first  of 
these  sounds  is  'v,'  and  the  only  symbol  that  can  be  used  for  the 
second  is  rj  ."  If  Dr.  Whipple  read  the  N.  E.  A.  key  through  to 
its  end,  he  found  in  it  the  symbol  "a  for  e  in  over."  He  prob- 
ably thinks  that  the  Webster  e  is  something  different,  and  so 
would  not  recognize  in  the  N.  E.  A.  respelling  mekar  his  own,  and 
the  current,  pronunciation  of  the  word  maker.  He  evidently 
thinks — as  do  a  good  many  people  who  have  not  considered  it — 
that  what  is  called  the  "obscure"  vowel  is  heard  only  in  careless  or 
rapid  speech.  But  the  phoneticians — experts,  who  have  trained 
themselves  to  recognize  and  classify  speech-sounds,  and  who  have 
made  observations  far  more  numerous  and  careful  than  any  intelli- 
gent layman,  or  all  of  them,  could  make — these  men  say  that  the 
"obscure"  vowel  is  the  normal  sound  in  the  usage  of  the  best 
speakers  both  English  and  American.  The  normal  pronunciation 
(in  N.  E.  A.  symbols)  of  maker  is  mekar  ,  of  infant  is  infant , 
of  anatomy  is  anatami ,  of  culpable  is  kulpabl ,  of  recent  is 
risant ,  of  propose  is  prapoz ,  of  preface  is  prefis ,  of  create 
is  criet ,  of  senator  is  senitar  .  Dr.  Whipple  may  think  that 
he  does  not  pronounce  these  words  in  this  way;  that  he  makes  cer- 
tain finer  distinctions  in  sound  which  he  supposes  the  Webster  key 
to  provide  for.  But — if  he  pronounces  English  as  other  educated 
Americans  pronounce  it — he  does  not  use  ten  varieties  of  weakened 
or  obscure  vowels  requiring  transcription  in  an  alphabet  of  medium 
precision.  The  truth  is  that  the  Webster  key,  in  its  treatment  of  the 
"obscure"  vowels,  evades  and  smothers  the  facts;  and  a  reference 
to  its  "finer  distinctions  in  sound"  has  something  of  the  ring  of  im- 
position upon  the  ignorance  of  the  reader. 

As  for  the  ng  in  sing  and  the  n  in  bank  (Webster  ng  and 
g  ),  the  difference — if  there  is  a  difference — is  too  minute  to  be 
considered  in  a  dictionary  for  general  use;  one  symbol  is  sufficient. 
None  of  the  leading  English  phoneticians  (Sweet,  Soames,  Jones, 
Rippmann)  recognize  more  than  the  one  sound,  rj  .  For  a  simple 
statement  of  the  matter  Dr.  Whipple  may  be  referred  to  Professor 
Rippmann's  elementary  treatise,  "English  Sounds;  a  Book  for 
English  Boys  and  Girls"  (Dent,  1911).    In  §§19,  20  the  author 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  15 

says:  "In  long  the  two  letters  stand  for  the  nasal  sound  only;  and 
we  are  going  to  use  a  special  sign  for  this  in  future:  rj  ,  that  is, 
an    n    with  the  tail  of  a    g .     In  longer,     rig    has  the  value  of 

"Sometimes  we  say  rj  when  we  write  n ,  as  in  thank, 
anchor  ,     tranquil ." 

But  to  return  to  noting  the  inconsistent  and  therefore  "un- 
scientific "  features  of  the  Webster  key. 

6.  The  Webster  key  makes  an  extended  and  at  the  same  time 
inconsistent,  chaotic,  use  of  diacritic  marks. 

The  use  of  diacritics  in  itself  would  not  necessarily  make  the 
key  unscientific  if  the  marks  were  used  consistently,  that  is,  each 
always  in  its  one  significance.  There  is,  however,  a  question  as  to 
the  advantage  of  using  diverse  diacritic  marks  rather  than  diverse 
letter  forms  when  the  aim  is  to  distinguish  the  qualities  of  sounds. 

The  diacritic  may  very  well  denote  length.  In  the  words  art 
note  there  are  vowels  heard  also  in  the  first  syllables  of  artistic 
poetic  respectively,  but  in  the  one  case  the  vowels  in  question  are 
longer  than  in  the  other.  The  macron  put  above  the  symbol  will 
easily  and  clearly  distinguish  a  long  vowel.  The  symbol  for  the 
short  vowel  need  not  be  marked.  The  N.  E.  A.  alphabet,  for  ex- 
ample, distinguishes  these  four  vowels  with  a  minimum  use  of 
diacritics:    d    a ,     5    o . 

But  the  question  whether  it  is  better  to  use  many  or  few 
diacritics,  in  many  or  few  senses,  ought  to  be  satisfactorily  answered 
by  the  fact  that  competent  teachers  who  have  tried  both  declare 
against  any  further  use  of  such  marks  than  is  absolutely  necessary. 
The  chief  phoneticians  of  the  world  are  explicit  in  their  statements. 
At  an  annual  meeting  of  the  German  Modern  Language  Association, 
Zurich,  May,  1910,  W.  Vietor  discussed  the  need  of  a  consistent 
phonetic  alphabet  for  modern  language  schoolbooks  and  dictionaries. 
He  declared  (1)  that  such  an  alphabet  is  most  earnestly  to  be  desired; 
(2)  that  it  should  be  a  genuine  phonetic  alphabet,  not  one  made  with 
diacritic  marks;  (3)  that  the  alphabet  of  the  Association  Phonetique 
Internationale  best  answered  the  demand.*  Sweet,  the  leading 
English  phonetic  authority,  in  his  recent  book,  "The  Sounds  of 
English"   (Oxford,    1908),   says   (§313):   "The  most  objectionable 

*  Die  Neueren  Sprachen,  xviii,  549  (1910-11). 


16  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

class  of  letters  in  a  broad  alphabet  are  diacritical  ones."  f  Otto 
Jespersen,  of  Copenhagen,  one  of  the  keenest  of  phoneticians,  in  his 
"Phonetische  Grundfragen"  (Leipzig,  1904),  §25,  p.  19,  says  that 
to  mark  shades  of  sound  variation  for  which  there  is  no  symbol  in  the 
conventional  alphabet,  the  nearest  recourse  is  to  diacritic  marks. 
These  to  a  degree  have  long  been  in  use  in  certain  languages,  the 
macron  and  the  breve,  for  example,  in  the  work  of  old  Roman 
grammarians  and  metrists  as  marks  of  quantity.  It  is  no  wonder, 
therefore,  that  many  phoneticians  have  taken  refuge  in  such  means, 
and  have  tried  to  make  systematic  use  of  them — some  placing 
diacritics  above  the  letters,  some  below,  and  some  both  above  and 
below.  But  both  principles  lead  to  an  impracticable  alphabet. 
Lepsius  in  his  so-called  Standard  Alphabet  (1855)  carried  the 
practice  to  an  extreme.  "Since  his  time  it  is  only  dilettantists  and 
beginners  who,  incapable  of  profiting  by  the  warning  of  past  experi- 
ence, think  that  they  can  construct  a  satisfactory  phonetic  alphabet 
by  applying  an  array  of  diacritic  marks  over  and  under  the  letters 
of  the  Latin  alphabet."  The  International  Phonetic  Association, 
whose  headquarters  are  in  France,  explicitly  avoids  the  use  of 
diacritics  wherever  possible.  All  of  the  recent  steps  toward  a  uni- 
versal scientific  alphabet  in  England  or  in  this  country — the  alphabet 
of  the  Oxford  Dictionary,  that  of  various  scientific  bodies  in  England 
and  America,  that  of  the  American  Philological  Association  (1877) 
revised  into  the  A.  P.-M.  L.  and  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabets  now  under 
discussion — make  use  of  a  minimum  of  diacritic  marks. 

The  opinions  of  these  expert  phoneticians,  and  the  practice  of 
the  leading  philologists,  language  associations  and  scientific  bodies, 
furnish  satisfactory  guidance. 

Now,  it  must  be  noticed  that  the  1909  Webster  key  not  only  uses 
a  multitude  of  diacritic  marks,  but  uses  them  inconsistently. 

Leaving  out  those  signs  in  the  Webster  key  that  are  needed  for 
certain  foreign  words,  that  is,  counting  those  that  furnish  an  English 
phonetic  alphabet  equivalent  to  the  N.  E.  A.  key,  there  are  found  in 
the  Webster  six  vowel  characters  with  the  macron  ( a  e  I  5  65 
u  ),  four  with  the  macron  and  a  dot  (a  e  6  u  ),  ten  with  the 
breve     (a&eeloo     od    u    u),  one  with  breve  and  a 

t  By  "broad  alphabet"  Sweet  means  one  of  medium  precision,  for  general  or 
national  use;  an  exact  alphabet  specifically  for  phoneticians  he  calls  "  narrow." 


THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET      17 

dot — if  one  may  trust  one's  unaided  sight  (  6  as  in  s6ft  dog 
g6d ), — three  with  circumflex  (a  6  u ),  one  with  two  dots 
above  ( a  ),  two  with  one  dot  above  (a  a  ),  one  with  tilde 
(e). 

Here  are  twenty-eight  vowel  signs,  some  of  them  with  two  dia- 
critics, all  the  rest  with  one,  to  represent  vowel  sounds  that  phoneti- 
cians recognize  as  about  twenty-one  in  number!  And  there  are  two 
more,  oi  and  ou  ,  for  two  of  the  English  diphthongs  (those  in 
oil  and  now  ).  Thus  we  find  thirty  Webster  symbols  for  twenty- 
three  vowels. 

The  N.  E.  A.  key,  by  way  of  contrast,  serves  the  same  purposes 
with  twenty-three  signs,  just  one  for  each  sound :  d  a  ai  au  a 
aaeeiiiuooeeeiuuuuai.  Only 
eight  of  them  are  marked  with  a  diacritic,  the  macron.  The  diph- 
thong-signs are  consistently  formed  of  their  proper  elements,  so  that 
they  do  not  have  to  be  learned  for  and  by  themselves.  That  is,  one 
has  to  learn  the  form  and  phonetic  value  of  only  eleven  characters 
(aaaeioeuuai).  The  macron,  when  applied, 
is  always  to  be  interpreted  as  a  sign  of  length;  it  does  not  connote  or 
accompany  a  significant  change  of  quality.  A  scheme  of  symbols 
for  English  vowels  could  not  be  simpler. 

But  set  to  work  on  the  Webster  diacritics.  What  does  this  or 
that  diacritic  mean?     Length?  or  quality?  or  both? 

Compare  the  words  care  and  can  (Webster  respelling,  kar 
kan  ).  The  quality  of  the  vowels  is,  at  least  in  ordinary  American 
speech,  the  same.  The  vowel  in  care  is  long,  in  can  is  short. 
Is  one,  accordingly,  to  understand  the  circumflex  as  the  sign  of 
length,  the  breve  of  shortness  ?  Then  how  is  one  to  interpret  the 
Webster  symbols  for  the  vowels  in  old  and  all,  namely,  6 
and  6  ?  The  difference  here  is  one  of  quality,  not  of  length.  The 
only  conclusion  that  a  rational  mind  can  reach  is  that  in  a,  the 
circumflex  is  a  sign  of  length,  and  in  6  is  a  sign  of  quality,  which 
is  irrational. 

Again,  the  Webster  symbols  oo  for  the  vowel  in  food  and 
66  for  that  in  foot ,  represent  sounds  (not  properly  indicated  by 
the  symbol  o  )  that  in  an  alphabet  of  medium  precision  may  be 
regarded  as  one  vowel.  The  macron  and  the  breve  are  here  evidently 
signs  of  quantity;  but  since  only  one  of  them  is  needed,  it  is  foolish 


18  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

to  use  both.  Compare  these  symbols  with  those  used  for  the  vowels 
of  ale  and  at ,  namely,  a  and  a .  Does  this  second  pair 
of  symbols,  opposing  macron  to  breve,  represent  a  common  vowel  in 
the  two  words,  a  vowel  long  in  the  word  ale  and  short  in  the  word 
at  ?  This  can  not  be,  because  the  vowel  heard  in  at  does  not,  when 
lengthened,  become  the  vowel  heard  in  ale  .  One  can  not  apply 
what  one  learns  from  the  symbols  oo  06  to  the  interpretation 
of  the  symbols  a  a  ,  however  spontaneously  a  simple  mind  would 
assume  that  a  pair  of  symbols  distinguished  from  each  other  by  cer- 
tain diacritic  marks  must  have  the  same  relation  to  each  other  as 
obtains  in  another  pair  differentiated  in  the  same  way.  Two  cards 
marked  each  with  a  black  spot  are  aces;  but  of  two  marked  each  with 
a  red  spot,  one  is  an  ace,  and  one  is  something  else ! 

The  learner  fares  no  better  who  tries  to  reason  from  breve  to 
macron  in  the  Webster  symbols  I  and  i  ;  for  the  first  stands  for 
a  simple  vowel,  that  heard  (in  ill ,  and  the  second  for  a  diphthong 
whose  main  element  is  quite  another  vowel — namely,  the  diphthong 
heard  in    ice     (  ai ). 

The  Webster  uses  of  diacritic  marks  are,  in  fact,  tm-reasonable. 
Any  attempt  to  classify  the  diacritics  according  to  their  uses  will  end 
with  one's  defying  the  world  to  do  it.  One  must  fix  them  in  mind  by 
sheer  force  of  memory. 

The  attempt  to  learn  the  English  vowel  sounds  by  means  of  a 
phonetic  key  so  confused  and  contradictory  must  bewilder,  even 
stupefy,  a  child's  mind;  and  the  teacher  must  bear  a  useless  burden, 
perhaps  not  realizing  it,  who  tries  to  induct  children  into  the  science 
of  speech-sounds,  with  the  help  of  such  a  system  of  "ocular  phonetics 
run  mad." 

As  for  the  phoneticians,  they  will  none  of  it! 

There  is  no  living  phoneticiaa  who  can  regard  a  key  of  the 
Webster  kind  with  anything  but  impatience.  The  Webster  key,  in 
comparison  with  such  a  key  as  the  N.  E.  A.,  might  be  likened  to  the 
English  system  of  pounds  and  shillings,  in  comparison  with  the 
American  system  of  dollars  and  cents — except  that  this  would  be 
doing  an  injustice  to  the  English  system. 

It  is  because  of  this  multitude  of  inconsistencies  and  contra- 
dictions in  the  Webster  key,  and  in  every  key,  which,  like  it,  starts 
from  the  basis  of  English  alphabetic  and  pronunciation  values  of  the 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  19 

vowels,  that  phoneticians  and  philologists  and  progressive  teachers 
of  the  living  languages  (whether  the  mother  tongue  or  a  foreign 
speech)  reject  such  a  key  in  toto.  As  a  guide  to  pronunciation,  its 
only  usable  capacity,  it  is  of  questionable  merit  even  for  the  unin- 
structed  layman,  for  whom  its  leaning  upon  pronunciation  values 
might  be  felt,  at  first  thought,  to  be  an  advantage.  In  all  other  uses 
for  which  a  phonetic  alphabet  is  needed,  it  is  worse  than  useless;  it 
is  execrable. 

(3) 
Uses  of  a  Scientific  Alphabet 

A  simple,  rational,  and  scientific  alphabet  is  needed,  as  a  means — 

(a)  For  teaching  phonetics  in  schools  of  all  grades:  there  should 
be  elementary  instruction  for  children  learning  to  read,  somewhat 
more  thorough  work  for  pupils  taking  up  the  study  of  a  foreign 
language,  and  extended  and  thorough  practice  for  language  teachers. 

(6)  For  indicating  pronunciation,  in  schoolbooks,  dictionaries  of 
the  native  and  foreign  languages,  and  all  handbooks  and  general 
works  of  reference. 

The  purposes  of  a  phonetic  alphabet  are  here  named  in  inverse 
order  of  their  importance  as  present  public  opinion  would  regard 
them;  for  there  are  at  present  among  us  few  learners  of  English 
phonetics,  relatively  little  study  of  the  sounds  that  form  English 
speech  and  little  training  in  the  correct  and  intelligent  production 
of  those  sounds.  But  there  is  a  vast  army  of  users.  From  their 
point  of  view  the  main  function  of  a  phonetic  alphabet  is  to  indicate 
the  pronunciation  of  words  assembled  in  English  dictionaries,  ency- 
clopedias, atlases,  handbooks,  and  all  popular  scientific  treatises. 

For  this  purpose  such  an  alphabet  should  be  "easy  to  learn,  easy 
to  read,  and  easy  to  remember."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  last 
requirement  is,  for  the  average  uninstructed  layman,  not  essential. 
He  does  not  attempt  to  remember  any  key,  but  refers,  when  in  doubt, 
to  the  top  or  bottom  of  the  page,  where  he  finds  it.  His  chief 
need  is  that  the  symbols  of  the  key  be  clear,  explicit,  precise. 

That  established  English  spellings  are  quite  unfit  to  indicate 
pronunciation,  is  universally  recognized.  Most  dictionaries,  and 
some  encyclopedias,  respell  the  words,  and  in  many  schoolbooks  and 
handbooks  words  new  to  the  reader  are  treated  in  like  manner — a 


20      THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

more  or  less  phonetic  respelling  is  set  alongside  the  conventional 
form.  Manifestly,  it  would  be  of  very  great  advantage  if  all  these 
books  used  a  common  phonetic  alphabet,  if  there  were  a  national 
scientific  alphabet. 

It  will  be  worth  while  to  review  here  some  details  of  the  problem.* 

It  is  generally  agreed  that  a  phonetic  alphabet  intended  for  wide 
use  (1)  should  use  one  sign  for  one  sound,  (2)  should,  as  far  as 
possible,  employ  the  letter  forms  already  familiar,  (3)  should  add 
few  new  forms,  (4)  should  employ  few  diacritic  signs,  (5)  should  not 
mingle  forms  of  differing  styles  in  a  way  unusual  in  ordinary  print 
(for  example,  italic  with  roman,  capitals  with  small  letters),  (6) 
should  design  the  necessary  new  symbols  in  harmony  with  existing 
letters.  That  is,  the  respelled  word  should  offer  as  little  as  possible 
that  is  strange  or  startling  to  the  eye. 

It  would  be  well,  also,  to  adopt  an  alphabet  constructed  in 
harmony  with  international  usage.  Nations  to-day  are  too  close  to 
one  another,  intercourse  between  them  is  too  constant  and  intimate, 
for  each  to  go  its  own  way  as  of  old.  The  relation  that  a  phonetic 
alphabet  adopted  in  one  country  should  have  to  those  adopted  in 
other  countries,  is  briefly  stated  by  Sweet,  in  §§8  and  308  of  his 
"Sounds  of  English": 

"In  dealing  with  the  sounds  of  English  it  becomes  necessary  to 
adopt  a  phonetic  notation.  It  is  now  generally  agreed  that  the  best 
way  of  constructing  such  a  notation  is  to  give  the  letters  of  the 
Roman  alphabet  the  sounds  they  had  in  the  later  Latin  pronuncia- 
tion, with,  of  course,  such  modifications  as  seem  to  be  improvements 
or  otherwise  desirable,  supplementing  the  defects  of  the  Roman 
alphabet  by  adding  new  letters  when  required.  This  is  the  '  Romic ' 
or  international  basis.  .  .  . 

"Whatever  alphabet  is  adopted,  it  must  be  capable  of  modifica- 
tion so  as  to  supply  the  want  of  (1)  an  international  scientific  'nar- 
row' notation,  in  which  all  possible  shades  of  sound  can  be  expressed 
with  minute  accuracy  by  symbols  of  fixed  value,  and  (2)  an  indefinite 
number  of  national  'wide'  notations,  each  of  which  selects  the 
minimum  number  of  simplest  letters  required  to  express  the  prac- 

*  See  the  brief  but  complete  presentation  of  the  matter  in  Section  II,  pp.  4-17 
of  the  "Report  of  a  Joint  Committee  on  a  Phonetic  English  Alphabet"  (Publishers' 
Printing  Co.,  New  York,  1904) — the  Report  referred  to  on  page  7  above. 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  21 

tically  necessary  sound-distinctions  of  the  language  in  question, 
ignoring  those  that  are  superfluous,  so  that  all  the  national  systems 
appear  as  modifications  of  a  common  basis,  each  diverging  from  it 
only  so  far  as  is  made  necessary  by  considerations  of  simplicity  and 
ease  of  printing  and  writing  both  in  long  and  short  hand." 

That  is  exactly  what  is  attempted  in  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet — to 
effect  such  a  modification  of  the  international  alphabet  (of  a  thing, 
it  is  true,  that  does  not  yet  have  absolute  existence,  but  which 
nevertheless  is  already  fixed  in  all  but  its  minor  details),  as  shall 
adapt  it  to  national  use  in  this  country.  That  the  committee  suc- 
ceeded in  making  an  alphabet  that  is  in  substantial  harmony  with 
international  usage,  every  American  linguistic  scholar  will  recognize. 
That  in  itself  it  is  a  good  phonetic  alphabet  is  evident  upon  con- 
sideration of  what  characteristics  such  an  alphabet  should  have. 

The  symbols  used  in  respelling  to  indicate  pronunciation  should, 
above  all,  indicate  the  nature,  or  quality,  of  sounds.  Less  impor- 
tant, and  applying  mainly  to  vowel  sounds,  is  the  indication  of 
length  or  quantity.  A  third  essential  thing  is  the  indication  of 
syllable  stress  or  accent;  but  this  last  duty  does  not  rest  upon  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet. 

The  manner  of  marking  the  quantity  or  length  of  vowel  sounds 
is  a  matter  for  consideration.  Shall  quantity  be  indicated  by  the 
form  of  the  letter,  or  by  a  diacritic  mark?  Now,  expert  opinion 
and  practice  are  unanimously  against  a  general  use  of  diacritics. 
Quantity,  however,  is  a  thing  affecting  in  the  same  way  a  whole 
series  of  vowels.  If  it  is  indicated  uniformly  by  a  given  diacritic 
mark  that  has  no  other  significance,  one  has  to  learn  the  meaning 
of  this  mark  only  once  for  all.  And  since  in  English  fewer  long 
vowels  than  short  need  notation,  to  employ  a  plain  mark  as  the 
long- vowel  symbol  involves  a  minimum  use  of  the  diacritic*  What 
diacritic  should  be  chosen  is  to  be  decided  by  considerations  of 
clearness  to  the  eye,  and  durability  in  the  printer's  type.  On  these 
grounds  the  macron  is  the  best. 

*  In  the  construction  of  the  N.  E.  A.  and  the  M.  L.-A.  P.  alphabets,  as  of  that  of 
the  Joint  Committee  (given  on  pp.  8f.),  the  committees  thought  it  better,  in  an 
alphabet  of  medium  precision,  to  disregard  the  slightly  diphthongal  character  of 
the  long  vowels  (N.  E.  A.)  e  I  o  u  heard  to  some  extent  in  the  United 
States,  and  generally  in  South  England. 


22  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

It  is  when  one  comes  to  choose  the  means  of  indicating  the 
qualities  of  vowel  sounds,  for  consonants  give  little  trouble,  that 
difficulty  is  met  and  controversy  arises.  The  English  vowel  scheme 
appears,  in  its  English  dress,  to  be  a  monstrous  thing,  without  form 
and  void  of  meaning.  There  is  no  head  or  foot,  end  or  side,  up  or 
down;  absolutely  no  handle  by  which  to  take  hold  of  it,  nor  point 
of  view  from  which  one  can  conceive  of  its  having  a  form.  One 
must,  therefore,  take  the  familiar  vowel  symbols,  "a  e  i  o 
u  ,"  assign  to  each  a  phonetic  value,  and  make  additional  symbols 
(either  by  adding  diacritics  to  some  of  these  letters  or  else  by  in- 
venting new  forms)  until  there  are  enough  letters  to  have  one  for 
each  of  the  elemental  vowel  sounds  in  the  language. 

For  the  purposes  of  a  phonetic  alphabet  of  medium  precision, 
phoneticians  recognize  in  English  eleven  vowels  requiring  tran- 
scription, namely,  those  of  art  ask  at  met.  bit  note  not  pool 
but  (ov)er  (add)ed.  Indeed,  the  vowel  of  ask  need  not  be 
included ;  most  of  us  pronounce  it  as  we  pronounce  the  vowel  of  at. 
The  intermediate  vowel,  as  far  as  present  usage  is  concerned,  is  an 
invention  of  dictionary  makers.  We  need,  then,  five  (six,  with  a  ) 
new  vowel  symbols. 

If  we  listen  to  what  the  experts  say  (pp.  15f .  above), we  shall  not  use 
diacritic  marks  to  make  them;  for  above  each  of  the  original  letters 
we  must  at  times  put  a  diacritic  sign  of  length,  and  to  superimpose 
a  second  diacritic  of  quality  would  quadruple  the  ground  of  objec- 
tion to  diacritics.  We  could  make  the  one  diacritic  indicate  at  the 
same  time  both  length  and  quality;  in  which  case  we  must  have 
three  sets  of  diacritics,  to  mark  a  change  (1)  of  length  alone,  (2)  of 
quality  alone,  (3)  of  length  and  quality  together.  Which,  again, 
multiplies  the  diacritic  difficulty. 

Unquestionably,  the  best  procedure  is  to  make  five  or  6ix  new 
vowel  symbols,  as  was  done  for  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet.  Then  each 
symbol,  in  its  unmarked  form,  has  a  recognized  phonetic  value,  and 
never — whatever  diacritic  cap  or  tail  is  attached  to  it — stands  for  a 
radically  different  vowel.  Horses  may  be  of  different  colors,  shapes 
and  sizes,  but  you  never  mistake  a  horse  for  a  cow.  Whether  the 
N.  E.  A.  new  vowel  signs  are  satisfactory  in  design,  is  submitted  to 
the  intelligence  and  sense  of  harmony  of  the  public. 

Diphthongs  should  of  course  be  represented  by  the  letters  d&- 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  23 

noting  the  simple  sounds  that  combine  to  form  them.  No  other 
way  can  be  defended  by  logic  of  the  schools  or  by  common  sense. 
One  should  be  consistent.  If  one,  for  example,  chose  to  use  aw 
as  the  phonetic  symbol  for  the  first  vowel  in  awful,  and  ie  for  the 
vowel  in  sieve,  then  one  must,  to  be  consistent,  respell  the  word  boij 
as  bawie  ;  for  the  diphthong  in  boy  is  a  union  of  those  two  vowels. 

Being  provided  with  ten  or  eleven  simple  vowel  signs,  then,  and 
the  macron  as  a  sign  of  length,  we  can  represent  all  the  vowels  in 
English  speech  that  the  ordinary  uses  of  an  alphabet  call  for.  And 
to  translate  into  sound  the  twenty-three  symbols  thus  made,  we 
need  to  know  the  form  and  significance  of  just  twelve  things,  namely, 
of  eleven  letters  and  one  diacritic. 

By  way  of  parenthesis,  it  may  again  be  remarked  that  with  the 
Webster  key — since  neither  letters  nor  diacritics  are  uniform  in 
value — not  only  each  letter  but  also  each  combination  of  letters  or 
of  letter  and  diacritic  must  be  learned  by  and  for  itself;  in  the  which 
learning  one's  instinct  for  law  and  order  and  reason  must  first  be 
bludgeoned  into  unconsciousness. 

One  more  question  must  be  decided  before  our  phonetic  alphabet 
can  be  constructed:  how  shall  we  distribute  the  eleven  phonetic 
values  among  the  eleven  signs?  Phoneticians,  philologists,  our 
teachers  of  foreign  languages,  our  government  scientific  bodies,  and 
our  learned  associations,  have  chosen  to  use  the  vowel  signs  in 
their  Latin  values.  To  do  so  brings  the  notation  into  harmony 
with  phonetic  science,  which,  being  a  science,  is  international.  It 
makes  the  notation  a  help  instead  of  a  hindrance  in  the  study  of 
foreign  languages.  It  opens  the  literature  of  phonetics  to  teachers 
of  English.  It  brings  order  and  consistency  into  the  alphabet,  a 
consummation  impossible  when  one  symbol,  as  i ,  is  used  to 
denote  such  widely  separated  sounds  as  the  vowel  of  bit  ( i  )  and 
the  diphthong  of  bite  (  ai ) .  There  is  no  phonetic  kinship  between 
the  sounds;  nor  is  there  between  the  vowel  of  mate  and  the  vowel 
of  mar  or  mat,  nor  between  the  vowel  of  meet  and  the  vowel  of  met. 

To  use  the  letters  a  e  i  o  u  in  their  European  or  Latin 
values  creates  no  difficulty  for  any  one  who  knows  even  a  little  or 
wishes  to  learn  a  little  about  one  of  the  foreign  languages.  On  the 
contrary,  it  lightens  materially  the  learner's  task.  But  for  one  who 
knows  only  English,  it  looks  like  a  different  matter.     There  is  the 


24  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

heart  of  the  difficulty,  the  gist  of  the  opposition  among  laymen  to 
the  N.  E.  A.  or  any  similar  alphabet — so  far  as  that  opposition  is 
not  inspired  by  commercial  influences.* 

To  any  one  to  whom  the  alphabet  names  are  so  ingrained  that  he 
can  not  separate  a  from  ale,  e  from  eve,  i  from  ice,  but 
must  associate  these  letters  with  the  sounds  heard  in  the  respective 
words,  there  comes  a  shock  when  he  is  for  the  first  time  told  to  write 
e  for  the  sound  in  ale ,  i  for  the  sound  in  eve ,  and  ai  for 
the  sound  in  ice  ;  and  it  will  take  him  a  little  time  to  regain  his 
balance,  to  get  his  bearings.  An  alphabet  like  the  N.  E.  A.  is,  how- 
ever, so  much  more  simple  and  consistent  in  its  elements,  and  in 
their  application,  that  the  mastery  of  it  and  its  uses  must  for  a 
rational  mind  be  easier  to  attain  than  equal  efficiency  with  a  key 
more  intricate,  and  inconsistent  in  many  of  its  elements.  There 
have  been  no  investigations  or  experiments  that  show  the  contrary. 

The  recognition  of  specific  difficulty  in  learning  several  of  the 
N.  E.  A.  symbols  applies  only  to  the  cases  of  persons  to  whom  it  has 
become  a  habit  to  associate  with  certain  letters  the  phonetic  value 
given  by  their  alphabet  names;  and  the  difficulty  itself  is  only 
temporary. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  an  elementary  study  of  English  sounds  were 
introduced  where  it  ought  to  come,  namely,  accompanying  the 
child's  first  attempts  to  read,  and  if  a  consistent  phonetic  alphabet 
were  used  in  the  instruction,  the  child  would  have  less  difficulty  in 
learning  the  rational  key,  symbol  by  symbol,  than  in  learning  the 
Webster,  would  have  fewer  symbols  to  learn,  would  find  in  the  proc- 
ess of  learning  a  means  of  developing  instead  of  stunting  its  reason- 
ing powers,  would  find  pleasure  in  gratifying  its  instinct  for  order  and 
system,  would  more  easily  attain  a  correct  and  confident  pro- 
nunciation. 

*  If  the  plea  of  the  opponents  of  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  to  retain  "our  alphabet 
as  it  has  been  handed  down  to  us"  is  felt  to  have  any  weight,  one  should  consider 
that  present  pronunciations  of  the  alphabet  names,  as  of  other  words,  are  quite 
modern.  For  the  greater  part  of  their  history  the  vowel  signs  a  e  i  o  u 
have  had  in  English  their  continental  values;  and  the  names  of  these  letters,  until 
comparatively  recent  times,  were  simply  the  vowel  sounds  heard  respectively  in 
the  words  art  they  eve  note  rule.  There  is  nothing  sacred  or  immutable 
in  our  present  alphabet-names;  they  could  be  changed  without  difficulty  in  one 
generation,  and  the  change  would  be  little  more  than  a  restoration  of  earlier  usage. 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  25 

All  these  results  have  been  realized  in  teaching  modern  foreign 
languages  in  Germany,  France,  Denmark,  and  (more  recently)  in 
England.  That  the  pupil  must  first  learn  accurately  the  sounds  of 
the  language,  their  physiological  nature  and  relations,  and  must 
train  his  vocal  organs  to  make  them,  is  one  of  the  cardinal  principles 
of  the  "new  method"  of  language  teaching.  In  this  elementary 
instruction  an  ever  increasing  number  of  teachers  use  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  work  a  phonetic  alphabet  only.  After  the  pupil, 
reading  from  a  phonetic  transcript,  has  learned  thoroughly  the 
sounds  of  the  language,  then  he  is  gradually  introduced  to  the  con- 
ventional spelling.  This  principle  of  the  reform,  namely,  that  em- 
phasis should  be  laid  upon  correct  pronunciation  as  the  first  thing 
to  be  attained  in  the  study  of  a  foreign  language,  and  upon  phonetic 
training  as  the  means  of  attaining  it,  teachers  as  well  of  the  native 
tongue  in  those  countries  are  beginning  to  adopt  and  put  into  prac- 
tice. 

The  extent,  methods,  significance  and  results  of  the  "reform" 
in  modern  language  teaching  within  the  last  generation  should  be 
considered  in  any  decision  upon  a  matter  of  such  basic  importance 
as  the  construction  of  a  phonetic  alphabet.  Of  that  reform  a  leading 
English  educational  authority,  J.  J.  Findlay,  Professor  of  Education 
in  Manchester  University,  said:  "Quite  deliberately  the  present 
writer  ventures  to  assert  that  the  'reform'  in  modern  language 
teaching  now  in  progress  is  one  of  the  most  noteworthy  events  in 
the  sphere  of  Teaching  since  the  Renaissance,  surpassing  in  impor- 
tance even  the  results  of  introducing  Science  into  the  Schools." 

The  history  and  principles  of  the  reform  one  may  review  in 
numerous  educational  monographs,  and  in  articles  in  educational 
journals.* 

The  first  noteworthy  public  enunciation  of  the  reform  ideas  was 

that  of  Vietor  in  his  pamphlet  of  1882,  "Der  Sprachunterricht  muss 

umkehren!"     In  opposition  to  the  grammatic-philological  method 

then  in  full  vogue,  Vietor  advanced  the  ideas  championed  before  by 

*  See  especially  the  German  publications  like  M.  Finger's  "  Der  fremdsprach- 
liche  Unterricht"  (Leipzig,  1907),  and  Victor's  "  Die  Methodik  des  neusprachlichen 
TJnterrichts "  (Leipzig,  1902);  or  Jespersen's  excellent  "How  to  Teach  a  Foreign 
Language"  (English  edition,  Macmillan  Co.,  N.  Y.,  1904).  For  the  most  recent 
account  in  English  of  the  new  method,  see  F.  B.  Kirkman:  "  The  Teaching  of 
Foreign  Languages;  Principles  and  Methods  "   (Clive,  1909). 


26  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

such  educators  as  Ratichius,  Comenius,  and  Pestalozzi.  His  pam- 
phlet "demanded  thoroughness  of  pronunciation,  a  more  intensive 
study  of  reading,  and  inductive  study  of  grammar  based  upon  the 
reading.  Above  all,  not  the  dead  letter  but  the  spoken  word  was 
to  be  put  into  the  foreground  of  modern  language  teaching."  * 

Of  course  some  reformers  went  too  far.  They  were  accused  of 
putting  a  smattering  of  conversational  attainment  in  the  place  of 
solid  mental  training.  But  the  essential  principles  of  the  move- 
ment were  more  seriously  developed  and  built  upon;  and  the  prog- 
ress of  the  reform  became  so  unmistakable  and  significant  that  it 
began  (1901)  to  be  reflected  in  slow-moving  German  officialdom. 

German  official  Lehrplane  (Outlines  of  Instruction)  in  foreign 
languages  in  secondary  schools,  1882,  named  correctness  of  pronun- 
ciation as  the  first  requisite,  but  expressed  doubt  of  attaining  it. 
The  Outlines  for  1891,  however,  insisted  upon  it.  The  study  of 
phonetics  had  in  the  meantime  been  introduced  and  applied  to 
modern  language  instruction,  and  found  to  be  a  means  of  teaching 
right  pronunciation.  German  officialdom  recognized  the  results  but 
not  the  means;  for  the  official  Outlines  of  1891  forbade  the  use  of 
phonetic  script.  (One  should  keep  in  mind  that  no  satisfactory 
phonetic  alphabet  had  then  been  agreed  upon.  In  fact,  at  this  time, 
Paul  Passy  in  France  was  perfecting  his  alphabet,  now  known  as  the 
International  Phonetic  Alphabet,  and  used  by  the  leading  modern 
language  teachers  in  Germany,  as  in  practically  the  rest  of  Europe, 
including  England.)  Finally  in  1901,  Lehrplane  for  boys'  upper 
grammar  schools  (filr  die  hoheren  Knabenschulen)  no  longer  forbade 
phonetic  instruction  and  the  use  of  phonetic  script  in  beginning 
classes  in  foreign  language  work.f  This  official  recognition  of  the 
usefulness  of  a  phonetic  alphabet  is  significant. 

The  introduction  into  English  schools  of  the  continental  "re- 
form" (including  the  use  of  phonetic  script  in  beginning  classes) 
is  now  taking  place.  The  platform  of  progressive  English  language 
teachers  is,  in  brief:  Phonetics  is  "the  science  of  speech-sounds  and 
the  art  of  pronunciation"  (Enc.  Brit.).  "The  advantages  of  be- 
ginning a  foreign  language  in  a  phonetic  notation  are  many  and 

*  Krause:  "  The  Teaching  of  Modern  Languages  in  German  Secondary  Schools," 
Monatshefte  fur  d.  Sprache  u.  Pedagogik,  X,  6  and  8. 
t  Finger,  p.  31. 


THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET  27 

obvious.  A  learner  who  has  once  mastered  the  notation  and  learned 
to  pronounce  the  sounds  the  letters  stand  for,  is  able  to  read  off  at 
once  any  text  that  is  presented  to  him  without  doubt  or  hesitation, 
and  without  having  to  burden  his  memory  with  rules  of  pronuncia- 
tion and  spelling.  ...  If  the  learner  begins  with  the  phonetic  nota- 
tion, and  uses  it  exclusively  till  he  has  thoroughly  mastered  the  spoken 
language,  he  will  then  be  able  to  learn  the  ordinary  spelling  without 
fear  of  confusion,  and  quicker  than  he  would  otherwise  have  done." 

The  experience  of  teachers  who  have  adopted  this  platform  may 
be  given  in  a  few  representative  statements:  * 

"Every  foreign  language  teacher  finds  that  one  of  the  most 
serious  of  the  difficulties  which  confront  him  at  the  beginning  of 
his  teaching  is  the  fact  that  he  has  to  present  to  his  pupils  and  make 
them  acquire  correctly  a  certain  number  of  sounds.  .  .  .  The  quick- 
est and  surest  way  is  by  a  systematic  course  of  phonetics  and  regular 
practice  in  phonetic  drill.  .  .  .  Once  the  phonetic  alphabet  is  mas- 
tered,— this  is  not  nearly  so  difficult  as  some  think, — a  regular 
sound  drill  of  about  five  to  ten  minutes  at  the  beginning  of  each 
lesson  for  about  a  week  will  work  wonders.  ...  [A  child  finds]  sat- 
isfaction in  pinning  sound  down  to  a  symbol  that  can  represent 
only  one  thing.  .  .  .  [It]  satisfies  a  child's  sense  of  proportion  and 
fitness  of  things.  .  .  .  Does  the  use  of  phonetics  in  writing  spoil  the 
pupil's  ordinary  spelling?  ...  It  has  invariably  been  my  experience 
that  when  children  have  been  taught  phonetics  from  the  beginning, 
they  spell  French  words  far  more  correctly  than  those  who  come  to 
me  with  no  phonetic  training  at  all." — V.  Partington,  in  Mod. 
Lang.  Teaching,  ii.  (1905-6),  40-44. 

"True  it  is  that  the  earlier  it  [phonetics]  is  made  use  of,  the 
better  for  teacher  and  for  taught.  .  .  .  No  one  who  has  tried  the 
two  methods,  that  of  relying  upon  the  pupil's  memory,  and  that  of 
giving  him  the  phonetic  script  to  help  him  remember,  would  care 
to  give  up  the  use  of  the  script." — H.  W.  Atkinson,  Rossall  School, 
in  Mod.  Lang.  Quarterly,  hi.,  54,  56. 

"Phonetics  are  used.  .  .  .  The  idea  that  imitation  is  sufficient 
to  teach  the  sounds  of  a  foreign  language  is  dying  out." — Fr.  Dorr, 
in  Mod.  Lang.  Teaching,  ii.,  232. 

*  These  are  all  from  leading  English  modern  language  teachers,  and  school 
inspectors — practical  schoolmen. 


28  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

"A  beginner  may  hear  a  new  sound  a  thousand  times  without 
reproducing  it  rightly.  This  is  the  'imitation  fallacy,'  to  suppose 
that  mere  hearing  is  sufficient.  There  must  be  knowledge  and  con- 
scious effort.  ...  Of  all  the  classes  I  visited  the  pronunciation 
was  worst  in  those  held  by  foreigners  teaching  their  own  language 
to  English  children.  ...  A  beginner  should  always  hear  and  speak 
before  he  attempts  to  read  and  write." — E.  R.  Edwards,  Mod.  Lang. 
Quarterly,  vii.,  118. 

"At  first  we  found  it  extremely  difficult  to  combine  the  elements 
of  good  reading — articulation,  accent,  and  rhythm.  Our  energies 
were  almost  entirely  spent,  in  the  lowest  classes  of  all,  on  articula- 
tion, which,  with  the  complexities  of  French  spelling,  is  a  serious 
difficulty  to  beginners  of  nine;  so  that  when  we  came  to  deal  with 
accent  and  rhythm,  bad  habits  had  already  been  formed.  It  became 
evident  that  all  three  must  be  combined  from  the  very  first.  The 
solution  of^the  difficulty  lay  in  the  use  of  phonetic  script  in  the 
initial  stage.  We  introduced  that  of  the  Association  phonetique 
internationale  last  January,  and  we  have  every  reason  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  result.  It  reduces  to  a  minimum  the  difficulties  of  articu- 
lation. It  trains  the  ear  and  the  faculty  of  attention  to  a  degree 
which,  of  itself,  would  give  it  a  great  educational  value.  .  .  .  The 
stage  of  transition  to  ordinary  spelling  offers  no  difficulties  whatever, 
if  only  it  be  carried  out  gradually  and  methodically.  .  .  .  Last,  but 
not  least,  the  use  of  phonetics  keeps  the  teacher  up  to  the  mark  in  the 
matter  of  pronunciation,  and  helps  him  to  correct  his  own  defects." 
.  .  .  "Unless  the  alphabet  used  is  phonetic  there  is  likely  to  be  con- 
fusion just  at  the  time  when  clear  impressions  and  associations  are 
all-important.  In  short,  some  sort  of  phonetic  alphabet  is  the 
best  'mistake  preventor'  in  the  matter  of  pronunciation.  .  .  .  The 
one  point  I  want  to  emphasize  is  that  the  first  spelling  used  should 
be  phonetic." — L.  von  Glehn,  Merchant  Taylors'  School,  in  Mod. 
Lang.  Teaching,  v.,  46,  154. 

So  much  for  the  elementary  work  in  French  and  German  as 
done  in  English  secondary  schools.  Leading  foreign  language 
teachers  in  Europe  and  Great  Britain  agree  in  recognizing  the 
necessity  of  basing  the  earliest  stages  of  work  in  a  foreign  language 
upon  thorough  instruction  and  training  in  the  elementary  sounds  of 
that  language,  and  the  great  help  that  may  be  derived  from  the 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  29 

use  of  a  phonetic  transcript.  Jespersen's  "How  to  Teach  a  For- 
eign Language,"  Chapter  X  (pp.  142-173),  is  an  adequate  pres- 
entation of  the  matter. 

What  use  is  made  or  is  to  be  made  of  phonetics  in  the  elemen- 
tary teaching  of  English? 

That  the  method,  now  widely  used  and  found  to  be  so  efficient 
with  pupils  beginning  a  foreign  language,  would  bring  about  a  like 
advance  in  the  teaching  of  the  mother-tongue,  is  felt  by  a  very 
large  number  of  linguistic  scholars.*  The  consensus  of  opinion  of  the 
International  Phonetic  Association — a  society  numbering  about  one 
thousand  members  distributed  throughout  the  world,  drawn  from 
the  ranks  of  the  foremost  teachers  and  scholars — is  expressed  in 
"The  Aims  and  Principles"  of  the  Association  (1904):  "Phonetic 
writing  can  also  be  used  with  great  profit  in  elementary  school  work 
for  teaching  to  read  the  mother-tongue.  Learning  to  read  by  the 
usual  methods  is  at  best  a  long  and  dreary  task;  but  where  phonetic 
texts  are  used  it  becomes  short  and  easy.  When  once  a  child  reads 
phonetic  texts  fluently,  learning  to  read  the  common  spelling  is  a 
mere  trifle.  This  is  a  most  important,  though  hitherto  little  known 
application  of  phonetic  writing,  which  may  yet  revolutionize  the 
systems  of  education  all  over  the  civilized  world." 

Sweet  long  ago  wrote:  "If  our  present  wretched  system  of  study- 
ing modern  languages  is  ever  to  be  reformed,  it  must  be  on  the  basis 
of  preliminary  training  in  general  phonetics,  which  at  the  same  time 
will  lay  the  foundation  for  a  thoroughly  practical  study  of  the  pro- 
nunciation and  elocution  of  our  own  language — subjects  which  are 
totally  ignored  in  our  present  scheme  of  education"  (Preface  to 
"Handbook  of  Phonetics,"  1876).  Later  he  said:  "Phonetics,  of 
course,  should  be  begun  in  the  nursery.  The  time  will  come  when 
ignorance  of  phonetics  will  be  held  to  disqualify  a  nurse  as  much  as 
any  other  form  of  incapacity."  In  the  same  book  from  which  the 
last  sentence  is  cited,  the  author  further  says:  "  The  reading-books 
in  the  native  language  should  at  first  be  mainly  in  simple  prose, 
with  only  occasional   pieces  of  simple   poetry.     They  would,    of 

*  The  new  method  applied  to  the  teaching  of  English  may  be  seen  in  part  in 
the  books  of  H.  C.  Wyld,  "  The  Historical  Study  of  the  Mother  Tongue  "  (1906), 
"  The  Place  of  the  Mother  Tongue  in  National  Education  "  (1906),  "  The  Teach- 
ing of  Reading  in  Training  Colleges  "  (1908),  published  by  Murray,  London. 


30  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET 

course,  be  entirely  in  phonetic  spelling  on  a  Broad  Romic  basis, 
and  with  accurate  marking  of  stress  and  intonation"  (p.  245  of 
"  The  Practical  Study  of  Languages,"  Dent,  1899). 

Sweet's  words  are  beginning  to  bear  fruit. 

W.  Campbell  Brown,  in  Mod.  Lang.  Quarterly,  iii,  46,  writes: 
"The  use  of  a  phonetic  system  by  the  teacher  to  organize  the  teach- 
ing of  pronunciation  is  a  comparatively  simple  matter.  .  .  .  Should 
phonetics  be  only  and  for  the  first  time  applied  to  the  learning  of 
foreign  tongues?     We  should  answer  most  decidedly  in  the  negative. 

1.  Our  own  language  has  not  a  sufficiently  fixed  standard  of  pro- 
nunciation. The  use  of  a  Lauttafel  [phonetic  chart]  might  be  made 
of  great  service  in  improving  the  pronunciation  of  the  native  tongue. 

2.  Phonetic  signs  and  the  use  of  the  Lauttafel  are  much  more  rapidly 
learned  through  the  medium  of  English  than  of  a  foreign  language. 

3.  There  is  no  reason  why  it  should  be  the  duty  of  the  foreign 
language  teacher  to  teach  pupils  the  use  of  their  organs  of  speech  and 
the  classification  thereby  of  the  different  sounds  of  speech." 

It  is  only  by  the  help  of  phonetics,  "the  art  of  pronunciation," 
that  it  is  possible  to  deal  effectively  with  vulgarisms  and  provincial- 
isms of  pronunciation  and  secure  uniformity  of  speech.  On  careful 
training  of  the  ear  and  the  organs  of  speech  in  the  early  years  of  the 
child's  school  life  depends  the  acquirement  of  a  clean  and  correct 
pronunciation,  the  overcoming  of  slovenly  habits  of  speech.  If  bad 
habits  are  not  got  rid  of  before  the  child  reaches  the  late  grammar 
grades,  he  will  in  most  cases  be  by  that  time  confirmed  in  them. 

Such  training  is  in  itself  an  educational  influence  now  beginning 
to  be  recognized.  Pronunciation  and  reading  are  the  first  subjects 
the  child  studies.  It  is  important  that  this  earliest  work  should 
appeal  to  and  satisfy  the  child's  instinct  for  consistency.  Contra- 
dictions in  the  material  put  before  the  child  do  more  harm  than  to  a 
more  mature  mind.  Let  a  child  feel  from  the  beginning  that  there 
is  system  and  reason  in  what  he  is  doing;  then  his  mind  will  take  hold 
more  readily,  grow  sensibly  into  a  more  efficient  thinking  machine. 
This  fact  explains  the  success  of  the  experiments  by  Feline  in  France, 
Miss  Soames  in  England,  and  Spieser  in  Germany,  in  teaching  chil- 
dren to  read  first  in  a  phonetic  script,  and  only  later  in  the  conven- 
tional spelling.  It  is  found  that  children  taught  in  this  way  for  two 
years  have  then  no  difficulty  whatever  in  passing  to  ordinary  spelling. 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  31 

They  make  better  readers,  and  better  spellers,  than  children  taught 
from  the  beginning  with  conventional  spelling  alone.* 

In  our  own  country  like  experiments  were  made  as  long  ago  as 
1866-70,  in  the  public  schools  of  St.  Louis,  under  the  administration 
of  W.  T.  Harris,  then  Superintendent  of  Schools  of  that  city.  Dr. 
Harris's  account  of  the  experiments  may  be  found  in  his  annual 
reports. 

In  1866-67  a  phonetic  primer,  printed  in  the  phonetic  alphabet 
constructed  by  Dr.  Edwin  Leigh,  was  used  in  the  Seventh  Grade  of 
the  Clay  School  (of  which  Harris  was  then  Principal).  Its  introduc- 
tion "proved  to  be  productive  of  the  most  satisfactory  results.  The 
class  that  finished  it  made  very  rapid  progress  in  learning  to  spell  in 
the  common  orthography  after  they  were  transferred  to  the  ordinary 
type  in  the  First  Reader.  But  the  best  of  all  was  the  demonstration 
that  the  imperfections  of  articulation  and  the  provincialisms  of 
pronunciation  current  here  can  be  completely  eradicated  by  that 
thorough  drill  that  is  rendered  necessary  in  teaching  the  Phonetic 
Primer.  Besides,  it  was  shown  that  all  this  can  be  done  in  less  than 
the  time  required  for  completing  the  same  textbook  in  the  ordinary 
type!"     {Thirteenth  Annual  Report,  1867,  p.  56.) 

The  St.  Louis  Board  of  Education  adopted  the  innovation  for  the 
ensuing  year,  in  the  Seventh  Grade,  throughout  the  city.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  Primer,  a  Phonetic  First  Reader  was  introduced.  The 
results  Dr.  Harris  narrated  and  considered  at  length  in  his  report 
for  1869  {Fifteenth  Annual  Report,  pp.  95-98).  He  notes  that  "the 
phonetic  system  is  found  to  produce  the  best  spellers,"  and  he  gives 
a  "summary  of  the  advantages  of  the  phonetic  system,  as  intro- 
ductory to  the  art  of  reading:  I.  Gain  in  time — A  given  standard  of 
good  reading  can  be  reached  in  about  one-half  the  time.  This  has 
been  thoroughly  tested.  II.  Distinct  articulation — clear-cut  words, 
every  element  brought  out  in  its  purity — is  secured.  III.  The 
logical  inconsistency  of  the  ordinary  alphabet  makes  the  old  system 
a  very  injurious  discipline  for  the  young  mind.     The  earliest  studies 

*  Such  a  result  is  to  be  expected  from  properly  conducted  experiments  with  the 
mother-tongue;  for  the  method,  when  applied  to  beginning  work  in  the  mother- 
tongue,  has  to  meet  conditions  essentially  similar  to  those  that  surround  the 
beginning  work  in  a  foreign  language.  In  the  latter,  its  success  is  established. 
See  Professor  Geddes'  statement  in  Die  Neueren  Sprachen,  xiii,  361. 


32  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

should  be  the  most  logical  and  consistent.  IV.  The  most  important 
feature  of  the  phonetic  system  is  the  substitution  of  the  analytic 
drill,  during  the  first  year  of  training,  for  the  loose  word-method 
in  vogue.  .  .  .  Pupils  who  are  taught  to  read  phonetically  make 
better  arithmetic  and  grammar  scholars,  and  are  more  wideawake 
and  attentive,  have  finer  discrimination  —  in  short,  are  more 
distinguished  in  those  traits  of  mind  that  flow  from  analytic 
training." 

Again  in  the  Sixteenth  Annual  Report  (1870),  p.  165,  the  Superin- 
tendent records  gratifying  results :  "Gain  in  time, distinct  articulation, 
better  spelling — these  are  its  merits.  .  .  .  The  gain  in  time  is  nearly 
one-half,  and  the  improvement  in  quality  fully  as  great."  By 
reference  to  the  Schedules  of  Studies  in  the  reports  for  1866  and  1870, 
one  may  find  that  in  1866  pupils  began  the  Second  Reader  in  the 
third  quarter  of  the  Sixth  Grade,  in  1870  in  the  third  quarter  of  the 
Seventh  Grade,  a  saving  of  one  year's  time  in  less  than  two  years' 
work  as  ordinarily  done. 

Finally,  in  the  Seventeenth  Annual  Report  (1871),  p.  133,  Dr. 
Harris  reviews  the  results  of  the  four  years'  use  of  Phonetic  Primer 
and  Phonetic  First  Reader,  and  again  states  his  conviction  that  the 
gains  promised  by  earlier  stages  of  bis  experiment  are  remarkable 
and  permanent. 

These  early  experiments  were  made  with  an  alphabet  much  less 
simple  and  clear  than  that  now  proposed  by  the  N.  E.  A.  committee. 
The  primary  teachers  of  that  time  (1866-70)  had  no  phonetic  train- 
ing— a  training  now  possible  through  the  development  of  the  science 
of  phonetics.  If  the  experiment  were  now  tried,  with  the  present 
understanding  of  the  problem,  on  the  scale  that  was  possible  to  Dr. 
Harris,  the  results  would  inevitably  overwhelm  any  opposition  to  the 
method,  and  to  the  means  employed  in  carrying  it  out.  Dr.  Harris's 
measure  of  success,  however,  substantiates  what  modern  language 
teachers  are  to-day  finding  out — the  greater  effectiveness  of  the 
"new  method,"  with  its  reliance  upon  early  and  thorough  training 
in  phonetics  and  its  employment  of  a  scientific  alphabet  as  an  aid  to 
the  child's  first  steps  in  language. 

More  recent  primary  English  instruction  based  on  phonetics  is 
referred  to  in  Modern  Language  Teaching,  ii,  232:  "I  have  seen  ex- 
cellent results  obtained  from  judicious  and  systematic  use  of  pho- 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  33 

netics  in  teaching  children  to  speak  and  read  their  mother-tongue  by 
Miss  Nellie  Dale,  of  Wimbledon." 

Miss  Dale's  work  is  based  upon  phonetics  and  involves  thorough 
training  of  the  children  in  speech-sounds.  It  is  true  she  does  not  use 
a  phonetic  alphabet.  She  substitutes  the  device  of  printing  letters  in 
varying  colors — vowel  signs  in  red,  voiced-consonant  signs  in  black, 
voiceless  in  blue,  silent  in  yellow.  With  what  Professor  Rippmann 
characterizes  as  nothing  short  of  genius,  she  adapts  her  method  to 
the  child  mind  with  excellent  results.  Nevertheless,  even  with  her 
method,  the  inconsistencies  of  conventional  spelling  flare  up  in  the 
face  of  the  child,  and  must  be  overcome  by  memory  alone;  and  Miss 
Dale's  genius  appears  in  the  interesting  devices  by  which  she  assists 
the  memory.  In  the  hands  of  teachers  at  large,  a  still  more  con- 
sistent means  of  representing  sounds  would  lighten  the  task  and  re- 
lieve the  child  of  part  of  the  burden  that  her  system  in  a  measure 
still  imposes  upon  the  memory. 

In  the  kindergarten  and  primary,  her  device  of  colored  letters  and 
appropriate  pictures  would  greatly  increase  the  pleasure  and  inter- 
est of  the  child,  whatever  alphabet  is  used.  It  can  not,  however, 
have  the  full  educational  value  of  a  strictly  scientific  and  consistent 
scheme  of  symbols. 

A  really  scientific  alphabet  is  needed  from  the  beginning  of  the 
child's  work  with  speech-sounds. 

The  opponents  of  the  N.  E.  A.  and  the  M.  L.-A.  P.  alphabets 
seem  not  to  realize  that  the  proposals  of  these  educators  and  scholars 
are  in  fine  with  the  general  advance  of  linguistic  science  in  the  last 
two-thirds  of  the  nineteenth  century.  That  movement,  of  late 
quickened  and  directed  by  the  special  development  of  the  science  of 
phonetics,  and  the  application  of  that  science  to  language  teaching, 
is  older  and  broader  than  the  modern  language  "reform."  It  affects 
all  language  work.  The  reform  of  Latin  pronunciation  in  America 
and  England  was  one  of  its  minor  currents,  and  had  a  history  that 
the  present  reform  in  modern  language  teaching  seems  to  be  repeating. 

It  is  interesting  now  to  review  the  prolonged  controversy  over  the 
introduction  of  the  Roman  pronunciation  of  Latin  into  American 
and  English  schools.  It  offers  many  parallels  to  the  present  struggle 
over  alphabets. 

Let  us  keep  to  the  English  pronunciation  of  Latin,  said  they  of  a 


34  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

generation  ago;  it  will  help  our  students  in  their  pronunciation  and 
their  use  of  the  mother-tongue.  The  new-fangled  way  will  be 
harder  to  learn,  will  put  another  bar  in  a  stile  already  too  high  for 
many  of  our  pupils  in  Latin  to  climb  over.  The  "innovation"  will 
throw  additional  burdens  upon  teachers  of  Latin,  who  must  now  not 
only  re-instruct  themselves  in  a  strange  and  difficult  subject,  but 
must  take  up  the  task  of  teaching  the  subject  to  unwilling  schoolboys. 
The  English  pronunciation  of  Latin  is  for  us  at  once  the  "natural," 
the  logical,  and  the  helpful.  We  have  already  a  mass  of  phrases  in 
law,  medicine  and  the  arts,  which  we  pronounce  in  the  English  way. 
Let  us  rally  to  the  defense  of  our  established,  tried,  and  familiar  ways 
against  a  change  that  threatens  to  subvert  them.  The  reformers  are 
themselves  not  agreed;  they  have  only  uncertainty  and  confusion  to 
offer  us.  The  ruin,  moreover,  will  involve  more  than  our  Latin  and 
our  English  scholarship.  Our  language  itself  is  threatened!  There 
is  a  foe  in  hiding.  Spelling  reform  is  on  foot;  and  it  and  the  reform 
of  Latin  pronunciation  are  alhes! 

That  this  is  no  exaggerated  picture  of  the  Latin  pronunciation 
controversy  of  thirty  years  ago,  and  later  than  that  in  England,  a 
glance  into  the  literature  of  the  struggle  will  show.  A  few  specimen 
passages  follow: 

"The  whole  question  is  whether  it  will  tend  to  promote  the  study 
of  Latin  if  we  put  another  bar  in  the  stile  already  too  high  for  most 
boys  in  the  form  of  a  foreign  pronunciation,  to  which  they  are  unwill- 
ing to  lend  their  tongues,  and  which  deprives  them  to  a  great  extent 
of  the  help  in  suggestion  and  to  the  memory  of  like  sounding  English 
words,  derivative  from  the  Latin." — A  London  Times  correspondent, 
April  6,  1907. 

"But  of  this  [i.  e.,  of  the  value  of  using  the  Roman  pronunciation 
in  any  serious  study  of  Latin  philology]  boys  can  not  easily  be  con- 
vinced; and  accordingly  they  did  not  care  for  a  change  that  seemed  to 
them  merely  troublesome."— Headmaster  of  Westminster  (1879). 

"I  think  'reformed  Latin  pronunciation'  a  mere  waste  of  time, 
and,  if  done  on  a  fictitious,  professor-made  plan,  absurd.  .  .  .  But 
cui  bono  'Reform'?  Not  for  any  practical  end."— Headmaster  of 
Rugby  (1876). 

"Philological  skill  is  not  dependent  upon  the  accidents  of  utter- 
ance."—Principal  of  Phillips  Academy,  Andover  (1879). 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  35 

"The  entire  method  is  so  unlike  the  English  pronunciation  of 
Latin  as  not  to  be  understood  by  one  who  has  not  made  a  long  and 
diligent  study  of  it  with  careful  and  frequent  practice.  It  makes  the 
study  of  pronunciation  a  difficult,  repulsive  and  unnecessary  prelude 
to  the  study  of  Latin.  .  .  .  How  easy  and  rational  to  pronounce  the 
Latin  word  and  its  English  derivative  in  the  same  way;  vivid  and 
vivid  us,  circumjacent  and  circumjaceo !  .  .  .  Attempts  to  use  other 
systems  [than  the  English]  are  ineffectual,  misguiding,  and  detri- 
mental to  genuine  scholarship,  both  Latin  and  English." — Undated 
pamphlet,  reprinted  from  The  North  Carolina  Teacher. 

"So  far  from  the  system  resting  upon  a  basis  of  truth,  the  want  of 
harmony  among  its  supporters  discredits  the  evidence  adduced  in  its 
behalf,  and  renders  uniformity  of  practice  impossible." — M.  M. 
Fisher's  "Three  Pronunciations,"  3d  ed.  (1884),  p.  179. 

"Will  you  allow  me  to  thank  you  for  the  satisfaction  which  your 
'Three  Pronunciations  of  Latin'  has  afforded  me?  Such  a  work  was 
sadly  needed,  and  I  think  it  has  come  at  the  right  time.  My  impres- 
sion is,  that  it  has  caught  the  '  Latin  Pronunciation'  on  the  down-grade, 
and  has  given  it  a  blow  which  I  sincerely  hope  will  help  to  send  it  to 
perdition." — Id.,  p.  216. 

"I  am  a  total  stranger  to  you,  but  take  the  liberty  of  a  brother 
professor  to  offer  you  my  best  thanks  for  your  capital  book  on  the 
pronunciation  of  Latin.  .  .  .  One  thing  I  am  fully  persuaded  of,  and 
that  is  that  our  would-be  classical  reformers  will  not  only  murder 
Latin,  but  slaughter  English  in  the  bargain." — Id.,  p.  215. 

"There  is  another  phase  of  this  threatened  revolution,*  .  .  . 
the  Spelling  Reform.  .  .  .  That  the  Reform  Association  aim  at 
revolution  in  English  orthography  is  as  certain  as  that  two  and  two 
make  four.  That  the  reformed  Latin  pronunciation  means  revolu- 
tion in  Latin  is  just  as  certain.  .  .  .  Reform  in  English  spelling  and 
reform  in  Latin  pronunciation  are  natural  allies.  .  .  .  The  hard 
method  must  come  into  our  vernacular  as  an  inevitable  necessity. 
For  Professor  March  says,  'We  shall  pronounce  [Latin],  of  course, 
as  the  Romans  did.'  Hence  the  English  and  the  so-called  Conti- 
nental modes  of  pronouncing  Latin,  according  to  Professor  March, 
will  no  more  be  thought  of;  and,  worst  of  all,  and  positively  sure  in 
process  of  time,  will  be  the  dragging  of  our  noble  English  tongue, 
*  The  small  capitals  and  the  italics  belong  to  the  original. 


36  THE  N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

with  all  its  hallowed  associations,  back  to  the  hard,  harsh,  and  un- 
couth standard  which  Roman  Latinists  insist  characterized  the 
stately  Latin  two  thousand  years  ago." — Id.,  p.  168f. 

Here  are  arguments  much  like  those  one  meets  nowadays  against 
the  proposed  scientific  alphabet — arguments  from  expediency,  argu- 
ments from  the  quiver  of  an  out-of-date  scholarship,  appeals  to 
passion  and  prejudice. 

Vigorous  expression  was  sometimes  not  wanting  on  the  other  side: 
"That  [i.  e.,  the  English  pronunciation  of  Latin]  is  merely  a  jargon 
produced  by  deafness,  carelessness,  confusion  and  isolation.  It 
has  no  merit  except  a  supposed  utility  to  schoolmasters,  which  I 
think  overestimated." — Another  London  Times  correspondent. 

The  reform  of  Latin  pronunciation  won  its  way  in  America  and 
in  England  because  it  had  the  best  linguistic  scholarship  behind  it. 
The  reform  method  of  teaching  living  languages  is  winning  its  way 
to-day  because  present-day  linguistic  scholarship  is  behind  it.  The 
reform  involves  a  study  of  phonetics  as  the  basis  of  language  in- 
struction, as  the  first  step  for  the  beginner,  whether  a  child  in  the 
primary  years  just  learning  to  read  its  mother-tongue  or  a  boy  in 
the  higher  grades  taking  up  the  study  of  a  foreign  tongue.  Ad- 
vanced language  work  is  still  more  dependent  upon  phonetics. 
Phonetics  is  the  science  of  speech-sounds,  the  material  of  which 
language  is  composed.  In  all  the  Scotch  Training  Schools  for 
teachers  the  study  of  phonetics  is  a  required  subject;  and  in  England 
also,  where  the  government  Board  of  Education  has  recently  lessened 
the  requirement  because  of  too  great  pressure  upon  the  students, 
the  Training  Schools  and  the  teachers  are  demanding  that  the 
subject  be  restored  to  the  compulsory  list.*  Progressive  teachers 
of  English  and  of  foreign  languages  in  England  are  following  close 
in  the  wake  of  their  continental  colleagues. 

It  has  seemed  needful  to  point  out  (1)  the  weight  of  authority 
behind  the  movement  to  adopt  a  national  phonetic  alphabet  in  this 
country,  and  the  substantial  agreement  of  all  our  phoneticians, 
philologists,  and  leading  educators  in  the  results  thus  far  attained, 
(2)  the  grounds  of  objection  to  a  key  of  the  Webster  kind,  and  (3) 

*  See  Mod.  Lang.  Teaching,  Feb.,  1910,  and  a  communication  from  F.  M.  Purdie 
on  pp.  129-132  in  Volume  V  (1909)  of  the  same  journal. 


THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET  37 

the  great  need — indeed,  absolute  necessity — of  a  national  scientific 
alphabet  to-day,  as  an  instrument  for  the  study  and  teaching  of 
the  native  and  foreign  languages,  and  as  a  simple  but  accurate  way 
to  indicate  the  pronunciation  of  words  in  our  multitude  of  school- 
books  and  reference  works.  These  are  important  matters  for  con- 
sideration, and  Dr.  Whipple's  pamphlet  leaves  most  of  them  un- 
touched. The  conclusions  that  he  draws  from  his  limited  experiments, 
even  if  they  were  justified  by  his  results,  leave  still  a  great  deal  to  be 
said  before  one  can  intelligently  and  rationally  decide  against  the 
adoption  of  the  key  proposed  by  the  N.  E.  A.  committee.  And  if  it 
were  shown  that  his  experiments  were  materially  unfair  and  quite  in- 
adequate, and  moreover  that  the  results  were  at  times  wrongly  in- 
terpreted, in  some  specific  points  actually  reversed,  and  that  his 
conclusions  from  them  were  therefore  baseless,  his  work  must,  for 
every  intelligent  reader,  offer  little  ground  for  opposition  to  the 
N.  E.  A.  alphabet. 

That  such,  in  fact,  is  the  case,  a  review  of  his  pamphlet  will  show. 


II 

It  remains  now  to  examine  in  some  detail  the  experiments  that 
Dr.  Whipple  made,  the  manner  in  which  he  handled  his  results,  and 
the  reasonableness  of  the  conclusions  that  he  drew  from  them. 

In  his  introductory  paragraphs  Dr.  Whipple  refers  to  the  grounds 
upon  which  objection  has  been  made  to  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet:  (1) 
"Practically  every  elementary  textbook  in  spelling,  reading,  geog- 
raphy and  history  in  use  in  this  country  must  be  revised";  (2) 
"Thousands  of  teachers  will  have  to  drop  a  familiar  system  and  learn 
a  new  one";  (3)  "It  has  also  been  pointed  out  that  the  Proposed  Key 
is  open  to  certain  obvious  criticisms  from  the  standpoint  of  phil- 
ology." 

As  to  these  objections,  one  must  recognize  that  the  first  has  been 
much  magnified.  There  is  not  now,  and  has  not  been  in  the  past, 
uniformity  of  usage  in  the  mass  of  books  referred  to.  The  Webster 
key  itself  has  been  greatly  altered  with  each  revision  of  the  diction- 
ary. Not  all  the  textbooks  assumed  to  use  that  key  really  do  use  it 
as  it  is  or  was.     If  Dr.  Whipple  will  examine  the  spellers,  readers, 


J  1  & 


38  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

and  other  schoolbooks  in  current  use,  he  will  find  a  portion  of  them 
using  a  pronouncing  key  other  than  the  Webster;  and  of  those  using 
the  Webster,  some  modify  it. 

Nor  is  it  any  more  accurate  to  say,  as  some  opponents  of  the 
N.  E.  A.  alphabet  urge,  that  the  adoption  of  that  alphabet  will  render 
useless  the  thousands  of  reference  books  in  American  libraries  and 
homes.  Besides  the  Webster  dictionaries,  only  two  such  works 
published  in  this  country  use  the  Webster  key,  and  only  one  of  these, 
The  New  International  Cyclopedia,  is  an  important  general  reference 
work.  On  the  other  hand,  the  N.  E.  A.  key  has  been  adopted  for 
future  editions  of  the  Standard  dictionaries  of  the  Funk  &  Wagnalls 
Company,  and  the  International  Alphabet  in  a  new  series  of  bi- 
lingual dictionaries  for  school  use,  namely,  the  International  Uniform 
Dictionaries  published  by  Hines,  Noble  &  Eldridge,  and  a  slight 
modification  of  the  International  Alphabet  in  the  serviceable  and 
inexpensive  Dictionary  of  Hard  Words,  by  R.  M.  Pierce,  published 
by  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.,  1910.  Other  American  dictionaries  and 
cyclopedias  either  use  a  special  key  of  their  own  (as  The  Century 
Dictionary  and  Worcester's),  or  else  (as  the  majority  of  them)  none 
at  all.  No  work  of  English  origin,  of  course,  uses  the  Webster  key. 
All  such  books  will  remain  in  use,  as  now,  until  they  are  worn  out  or 
superseded  by  better. 

Furthermore,  to  say  that  the  adoption  of  the  N.  E.  A.  key  will 
throw  any  current  schoolbooks  out  of  use  is  to  mislead  the  public. 
Textbooks  in  our  public  schools  are  frequently  changed.*  Now,  the 
N.  E.  A.  alphabet  could  not  at  once  be  introduced  everywhere,  and 
it  is  not  well  that  it  should  be;  for  teachers  must  first  learn  how  to 
use  it. t  A  manufacturer  can  not  suddenly  put  improved  machinery 
into  his  plant,  however  more  efficient  the  new  may  be.  His  workmen 
must  know  how  to  use  it. 

But  that  is  the  second  objection  that  Dr.  Whipple  recalls:  thou- 
sands of  teachers  will  have  the  task  thrust  upon  them  of  learning  a 
new  key.     Wouldn't  it  be  a  good  thing  to  happen?     No  one  can  ob- 

*  In  fact,  publishers  will  be  found  that  welcome  a  frequent  change.  The 
ethics  of  it  is  left  to  the  reader's  conscience. 

t  Indeed,  practically  all  of  the  objections  that  have  been  made  in  England  to 
the  introduction  of  the  phonetic  method  in  language  teaching  arise  from  abuse  of  the 
method  in  the  hands  of  teachers  not  prepared  to  use  it. 


THE  N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  39 

serve  what  a  great  advance  has  been  and  is  being  made  in  the  teach- 
ing of  living  languages  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean,  without 
recognizing  that  elementary  as  well  as  advanced  language  instruc- 
tion in  this  country  will  gain  immensely  if  our  thousands  of  teachers 
could  have  the  opportunity  of  following  their  foreign  colleagues  in 
improved  methods  and  improved  means  of  language  work.  Give 
them  the  opportunity  to  do  this  better  work.  Few  of  them  will  not 
eagerly  grasp  at  it.  The  task  of  learning  so  consistent  and  simple  a 
key  as  the  N.  E.  A.  is  not  insurmountable;  on  the  contrary,  under 
proper  guidance,  it  is  negligible.  By  the  time  that  new  editions  of 
texts  are  needed,  teachers  can  be  ready  to  use  them,  and  the  new, 
simple,  rational  alphabet  proposed  by  the  N.  E.  A.  committee  can 
be  incorporated  without  financial  loss  to  publisher  or  pupil.  And 
the  gain  to  American  schools  in  efficiency  will  be  beyond  reckoning. 

The  third  objection  that  Dr.  Whipple  recalls — "certain  obvious 
criticisms"  of  the  N.  E.  A.  key  "from  the  standpoint  of  philology" — 
is  nothing  short  of  grotesque.  Corral  all  the  reputable  English  phil- 
ologists in  England  and  in  America;  you  will  not  find  among  them 
one  champion  of  the  Webster  kind  of  key,  nor  one  acquainted  with 
conditions  in  this  country  who  will  not  recognize  the  N.  E.  A.  as  a 
scientific  alphabet  well  adapted  to  the  situation  which  it  is  designed 
to  meet.*  No  one  of  its  supporters  will  say  that  it  is  really  perfect, 
for  it  must  in  the  nature  of  the  case  serve  two  masters,  the  necessity 
of  having  a  scientific  key  for  successful  work  in  the  study  of  speech- 
sounds  in  the  primary  room  and  higher,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
need  of  making  that  scientific  alphabet  at  the  same  time  simple  and 
easy  enough  for  general  use.  The  ideally  perfect  is  unattainable. 
But  the  N.  E.  A.  key  is  so  immeasurably  superior  to  the  Webster — 
from  the  scientific  philologist's  point  of  view — that  hesitation  be- 
tween the  two  is  for  the  philologist  unthinkable. 

Dr.  Whipple  then  puts  a  question  as  to  a  possible  fourth  objec- 
tion to  the  N.E.  A.  key:  Is  it  not  pedagogically  inferior  to  the  Web- 
ster? A  minor  bit  of  evidence  against  the  key  Dr.  Whipple  finds  in 
the  fact  that  "the  only  system  of  primers  published  in  this  country 
that  incorporated  a  system  of  key  notation  at  all  like  that  now  pro- 
posed has  been  a  complete  failure  and  has  been  withdrawn  from  the 

*  In  Appendix  II  the  reader  will  find  resolutions  recently  passed  by  the  three 
leading  philological  societies  of  America  endorsing  the  N.  E.  A.  key. 


40  THE  N.  E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

market.  Nevertheless,"  Dr.  Whipple  goes  on  to  say,  "it  will  not 
do  to  reject  the  Proposed  Key  on  this  evidence  alone,  since  the  failure 
of  the  primer  in  question  may  have  been  due  to  other  defects  than 
its  phonetic  system."  The  assumption  that  there  were  other  defects 
in  this  primer  is  wholly  gratuitous — at  least,  defects  of  a  kind  that 
Dr.  Whipple's  words  suggest;  for  possibly  the  sole  defect  of  the 
primer  may  have  been  in  its  being  ahead  of  the  times.  In  which  case 
the  remedy  is  to  move  forward!  * 

Putting  aside  the  minor  bit  of  evidence  that  the  fate  of  this  primer 
may  offer,  Dr.  Whipple  tests  the  relative  merits  of  the  Webster  key 
and  the  N.  E.  A.  key  by  means  of  four  experiments;  and  the  conclu- 
sions that  he  draws  from  his  results  he  summarizes  as  follows: 

"We  have  no  hesitation  in  declaring  that  the  key  proposed  by  the 
Committee  of  the  National  Education  Association  is  inferior  for  peda- 
gogical purposes  to  the  Webster  Key  now  in  common  use." 

One  must  first  notice  in  Dr.  Whipple's  experiments  a  limitation 
of  field,  and  certain  underlying  defects,  which  render  his  conclusions 
of  less  authority  than  many  of  his  readers  may  think;  and,  in  the 
second  place,  one  must  recognize  that  the  results  of  certain  of  the 
tests  were  wrongly  interpreted,  so  much  so  that  at  times  the  rational 
conclusion — if  any  conclusion  at  all  is  warranted  from  such  hurried 
work — is  the  direct  opposite  of  that  which  Dr.  Whipple  draws. 


(1) 

1.  Dr.  Whipple's  test  of  the  two  alphabets,  especially  in  Experi- 
ment A,  was  limited  to  the  use  of  them  as  pronunciation  keys.  A 
phonetic  alphabet  has  other  pedagogic  uses.  Dr.  Whipple  does  not 
consider  the  relative  merits  of  the  two  keys  as,  for  instance,  instru- 
ments for  general  phonetic  work,  that  is,  instruction  in  the  nature 
and  classification  of  speech-sounds  and  training  in  the  reproduction 
of  such  sounds.  The  importance  of  such  work,  and  the  necessity  of 
having  a  rational  phonetic  alphabet  to  do  the  work  with,  one  may 

*  To  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us,  read  the  following  from  one  of  the  leading  En- 
glish educational  journals:  "  We  have  very  long  wondered  at  the  very  unprogressive 
character  of  the  American  publisher  of  books  for  modern  language  teaching,  and, 
in  particular,  at  the  absence  of  good  schoolbooks  that  pay  regard  to  the  modern 
advance  in  phonetics"  {Mod.  Lang.  Teaching,  July,  1911,  p.  143). 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  41 

learn  who  considers  only  briefly  what  has  been  done  and  what  is 
being  done  with  phonetics  in  Europe  and  in  England.  Nor  does  Dr. 
Whipple  undertake  to  show  the  relative  merits  of  the  two  keys  for 
beginning  students  in  foreign  languages.  There  is,  indeed,  no  need 
to  do  this;  for  experience  has  already  decided  in  favor  of  a  scientific 
alphabet  (see  pp.  25ff.  above).  Dr.  Whipple,  again,  takes  no  account 
of  the  absolute  necessity  of  a  scientific  alphabet  in  all  advanced  study 
and  training  in  the  science  of  phonetics,  a  science  that  is  the  sole  basis 
of  all  other  scientific  study  of  language.  Furthermore,  Dr.  Whipple 
does  not  take  notice  of  the  fact  that  scientific  bodies  like  the  U.  S. 
Geographical  Bureau,  the  Bureau  of  American  Ethnology,  the  Royal 
Geographical  Society,  have  already  adopted  a  scientific  alphabet  on 
the  basis  that  the  N.  E.  A.  uses,  and  that  their  practice  is  in  time 
sure  to  be  followed  by  compilers  of  popular  handbooks  that  use  their 
material.  So  that,  even  if  the  Webster  key  were  the  easier  to  learn, 
it  would  not  be  universally  serviceable.  However,  it  was  quite 
right  for  Dr.  Whipple  to  put  upon  his  investigations  whatever  limits 
his  time  and  his  material  dictated;  only,  this  must  be  emphasized: 
his  conclusions,  even  if  justified,  are  not  the  whole  of  the  matter. 

2.  But  the  limitations  marking  his  experiments  are  not  all  that 
lessens  the  force  of  his  conclusions.  He  tests  the  two  alphabets  on 
conditions  so  unequal  that  his  results  were  foregone;  for  (a)  the  per- 
sons submitting  to  the  experiments  (both  grade  pupils  and  college 
students)  were  distinctly,  though  perhaps  in  cases  unconsciously, 
possessed  of  a  knowledge  of  a  greater  portion  of  the  Webster  key 
than  of  the  N.  E.  A.;  (b)  the  time  given  to  learning  the  keys  was  al- 
together too  brief  for  the  results  to  be  permanent,  the  defect  working, 
of  course,  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  less  familiar  key ;  and  (c)  those 
who  conducted  the  experiments  seem  not  to  have  been  familiar  with 
both  the  instruments  they  undertook  to  te3t,  and  not  to  have  used 
the  newer  instrument  to  its  best  advantage. 

(a)  The  Webster  key  is  based  upon  English  alphabetic  and  pro- 
nunciation values.*  In  the  mere  process  of  learning  to  say  the 
alphabet,  a  child  begins  to  associate  with  the  letters  the  sounds  that 
are  heard  in  their  alphabet  names.  In  spelling  and  reading  his 
eye  later  meets  time  and  again  certain  combinations  of  letters  in  a 

*  The  statement  is  of  consequence  in  the  present  discussion  chiefly  when  applied 
to  vowel  symbols. 


42  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

given  phonetic  value,  and  grows  more  or  less  familiar  with  them,  so 
that  it  should  be  easier  for  him  to  accept  them  as  phonetic  symbols. 
Further,  if  his  textbooks  provide  respellings  in  the  Webster  or  any 
like  key,  he  will  have,  by  the  time  he  reaches  the  end  of  the  Seventh 
Grade,  a  very  definite  sense  or  f eeling  for  certain  symbols  as  embody- 
ing in  themselves  certain  sounds.  The  Webster  symbol  60  ,  for 
example,  is  striking  enough,  and  the  words  in  which  it  has  the  Web- 
ster value  are  frequent  enough,  to  make  the  "double-o"  an  old  ac- 
quaintance to  a  seventh  grade  pupil.  Only  one  of  the  Webster 
pupils  in  Test  6  of  Experiment  A  (Appendix  B)  failed  on  the  "00"- 
part  of  the  symbol;  about  one-third  of  them,  however,  confused  the 
diacritics.  It  is  impossible  to  avoid  the  conclusion,  from  a  study  of 
Appendix  B  (Whipple,  pp.  29-30),  that  the  chief  source  of  error  of 
those  pupils  using  the  N.  E.  A.  key  was  the  attempt  on  their  part  to 
give  the  alphabetic  or  some  known  pronunciation-value  to  the 
symbols. 

In  fact,  a  theoretical  consideration  of  the  question  is  not  needed 
here.  The  reader  should  merely  consult  Dr.  Whipple's  own  figures, 
in  Appendixes  G  and  H,  to  see  how  overwhelmingly  a  child,  after 
it  has  got  fixed  in  mind  the  association  of  letter  and  sound  forced 
upon  it  by  conventional  English  spellings,  interprets  unknown  or 
vaguely  known  phonetic  symbols  in  the  values  suggested  by  con- 
ventional spellings— which,  in  the  case  of  several  Webster  symbols, 
are  identical  with  the  Webster  values. 

For  a  psychologist,  Dr.  Whipple  underestimates  astonishingly 
the  degree  in  which  the  average  seventh  grade  pupil  must  be  as- 
sumed to  be  familiar  with  the  Webster  key.  On  page  9  he  attempts 
to  make  some  allowance  for  it.  He  says:  "It  may  be  objected  that 
we  have  not  allowed  for  the  fact  that  a  few  pupils  knew  the  long 
and  short  values  of  the  vowels  a  and  e  in  Key  1  [the  Webster 
key].  This  objection  is  partly  met  by  the  inclusion  of  one  more 
character  in  our  test.  To  obviate  it  entirely,  we  may  exclude  all 
reference  to  these  four  vowels.  By  consulting  Appendix  B  it  will  be 
found  that  19  errors  were  made  with  these  four  characters.  When 
these  are  subtracted,  we  have  left  20  characters  and  18  pupils,  a 
total  of  360  cases,  with  a  total  of  91  errors,  or  25.3  per  cent  wrong. 
Hence  the  elimination  of  the  four  Webster  symbols  known  to  a  few 
pupils  actually  reduces  the  per  cent  of  wrong  pronunciations  in  this 


THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET  43 

key  from  25.5  per  cent  to  25.3  per  cent.  Accordingly,  the  fact  that 
our  results  in  Test  6  indicate  a  decided  superiority  of  the  Webster 
Key  can  not  be  attributed  to  the  slight  knowledge  of  this  key  pos- 
sessed by  a  few  pupils." 

Dr.  Whipple  here  speaks  apparently  of  the  knowledge  the  pupils 
may  be  supposed  to  have  had  of  the  Webster  key  previous  to  their 
five  lessons.  Now,  why  does  he  assume  that  knowledge  limited  to 
these  four  symbols,  a  a  e  e  ?  Let  the  reader  turn  to  page 
22  of  Dr.  Whipple's  report,  where  the  author  is  stating  the  results 
of  Experiment  C  with  thirty-eight  Ithaca  grammar  school  children 
who  (presumably)  had  had  no  previous  instruction  in  either  key. 
Dr.  Whipple  there  says:  "To  be  more  specific:  'a'  is  pronounced 
according  to  Webster  132  times,  according  to  the  Proposed  Key,  9 
times;  'i'  is  pronounced  according  to  the  Webster  Key  128  times, 
according  to  the  Proposed  Key,  4  times;  'e'  is  pronounced  ac- 
cording to  the  Webster  Key  121  times,  according  to  the  Proposed 
Key,  once;  'u'  is  pronounced  according  to  the  Webster  Key  45 
times,  according  to  the  Proposed  Key,  8  times."  * 

On  Dr.  Whipple's  own  showing,  then,  he  should  have  excluded 
also  I  and  u  ;  for  by  Experiment  C  he  proves  that  these,  as  well 
as  a  and  e ,  are  overwhelmingly  pronounced  in  the  alphabetic 
values  of  the  letters  (which  are  the  Webster  values  of  the  symbols)  by 
grammar  pupils  who  (presumably)  have  had  no  previous  instruction 
in  the  Webster  key.  If  we  " exclude  all  reference"  to  these  symbols 
also,  we  shall  have,  for  Test  6,  on  the  Webster  key,  18  symbols  and  18 
pupils,  a  total  of  324  cases,  with  85  errors,  or  26.2  per  cent  wrong — 
an  increase  of  .7  per  cent  instead  of  Dr.  Whipple's  decrease  of  .2  per 
cent.  But  to  Dr.  Whipple,  as  to  Macbeth,  came  figures  that  "mar- 
shaled him  the  way  that  he  was  going." 

More  than  that,  there  are  some  things  here  pertinent  that  Dr. 
Whipple  apparently  did  not  see.  He  shows  a  blindness  to  certain 
facts  that  seems  strange  in  a  psychologist.  Our  present  question, 
throughout  Experiment  A,  is  not  only  as  to  what  Webster  symbols 
the  Cortland  grammar  pupils,  before  their  instruction  began,  would 
be  likely  to  pronounce  in  the  Webster  values,  but  also  as  to 
what  help  in  learning  other  symbols  they  would  have  from  their 

*  For  0  ,  the  revised  statement  that  Dr.  Whipple  makes  in  his  footnote,  p. 
22,  is  incorporated  above. 


44  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

already  fixed  knowledge  of  alphabet-names  and  pronunciation-values 
of  the  letters  appearing  in  the  Webster  symbols. 

Let  us  dismiss  all  recollection  of  Dr.  Whipple's  appendixes  and 
tables,  and  ask  ourselves  the  questions:  What  Webster  symbols  are, 
from  the  start,  likely  to  be  read  by  seventh  grade  grammar  pupils 
in  the  value  assigned  them  in  that  key?  and  what  further  symbols 
would  be  especially  easy  for  them  to  learn,  precisely  by  reason  of  the 
Webster  leaning  on  alphabetic  and  pronunciation  values? 

One  can  hardly  be  blind  to  the  fact  that  the  alphabet-names  of 
the  vowel  signs  would  be  the  first  sounds  to  suggest  themselves,  and 
in  the  case  of  the  long  vowel  signs  (a  e  i  o  u  )  would  at  once 
fix  themselves  in  the  mind  upon  presentation  of  a  familiar  key-word. 
There  is,  further,  no  doubt  that  the  Webster  symbols  oi  ou  ,  when 
presented  with  the  key-words  oil  out  beside  them,  would  offer 
no  difficulty.  The  combination  oi  every  pupil  had  repeatedly 
met,  in  familiar  words,  and  always  with  the  value  (N.  E.  A.)  ei . 
So  the  letters  ou  ,  also,  in  one  after  another  simple  and  familiar 
word,  had  for  every  pupil  spelled  (N.  E.  A.)  au  .  For  the  Cortland 
grammar  pupils,  the  acceptance  of  the  Webster  symbols  oi  ou 
meant  simply  the  acceptance  of  the  letters  oi  ou  in  their  known 
pronunciation  values.  The  Webster  consonant  symbol  zh ,  too, 
after  once  being  seen,  would  be  remembered;  it  is  easy  to  remember 
as  a  parallel  to  the  perfectly  familiar  sh  .  Of  the  short-vowel 
symbols,  e  and  I  would  offer  little  difficulty  because  the  letters 
here  involved  appear  (obscure  vowels  disregarded)  in  only  two 
symbols,  the  so-called  "long"  and  "short"  (e  e,  i  I),  of 
which  the  former  ( e  i )  fix  themselves  at  once  with  alphabet- 
name  values,  leaving  the  other  two,  without  confusion  and  without 
difficulty,  to  be  associated  with  familiar  key-words     end    and     ill. 

But  the  case  would  be  different  with  a  6  u  .  These  would 
be  hard  for  the  pupils  to  learn,  because  (in  the  first  place)  of  the 
number  of  symbols  using  the  same  letter  with  varying  diacritic 
marks:     aaaaa;*oooo;     uuu.    Manifestly, 

*  Confusion,  it  would  seem,  must  inevitably  arise  among  so  many  "a"- 
symbols.  That  it  did  arise,  Appendix  B  (Whipple,  p.  29)  shows.  Hence  one 
wonders  why  Dr.  Whipple  chose  &  as  one  of  the  four  symbols  of  which  some  of 
the  pupils  had  "slight  knowledge."  If  he  had  not  included  &  in  his  little  group 
of  four  "knowns,"  his  figures  would  have  been  reversed;  the  result  would  have 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  45 

the  difficulty  of  remembering  all  the  symbols  in  each  of  these  series, 
and  distinguishing  each  symbol  from  its  comrades,  is  far  greater  than 
with  a  series  of  two,  like  e  e  or  i  I .  A  child  is  likely  to  re- 
member the  first  of  each  series  here  (a  5  u  ),  because  its  value 
is  the  alphabet-name  of  the  letter;  but  on  the  others  he  would 
easily  fall  into  confusion.  Further,  several  of  the  vowels  in  question 
are  muffled,  back  vowels,  difficult  to  make  with  exactness,  and  to 
recognize  with  exactness  when  made.  This  is  especially  the  case 
with  the  sounds  whose  symbols  involve  the  letter  u  .  Only  by 
effective  phonetic  training  can  one  bring  ear  and  speech-organs  to 
an  intelligent  and  confident  mastery  of  these  sounds.  To  test  un- 
trained or  ill-trained  children  on  them  is  to  invite  confusion. 

We  hold  it  to  be  highly  probable,  then,  that  a  grammar-school 
pupil  would  have  little  difficulty,  if  any,  with  the  following  Webster 
special  symbols  (of  the  24  used  in  Test  6  of  Experiment  A) :  a  e  I 
u  e  I  oi  ou  zh .  If  Dr.  Whipple  cares  to  "exclude  all  refer- 
ence to  these"  nine  symbols,  well  and  good.  But  if  he  eliminates 
a  a ,  e  e  without  eliminating  also  I  u  I  oi  ou  zh ,  he 
has  his  trouble  for  nothing.  He  can  prove  nothing  unless  he  is  con- 
sistent in  his  argument.  It  is  not  consistent  to  eliminate  four 
symbols  on  the  ground  of  their  "slight"  familiarity  when  there  are 
at  least  six  others  equally  or  better  "known"  to  the  pupils  at  the 
start,  in  the  midst,  and  at  the  end  of  their  lessons. 

If  we  eliminate  our  nine  symbols,  we  have  left  15  symbols,  or 
270  cases,  with  90  errors.  That  is,  33.3  per  cent  wrong,  instead  of 
Dr.  Whipple's  25.5  per  cent.  Dr.  Whipple  might  better  have  found 
an  increase  of  7.8  instead  of  a  decrease  of  .2,  in  his  percentage  of 
errors  made  with  the  Webster  key,  in  Table  2. 

Dr.  Whipple  may  not  be  willing  to  go  in  the  direction  that  these 
figures  marshal  him;  but  he  must  at  least  accept  the  figures  of  his 
own  Experiment  C.  These  point  him  the  same  way,  if  he  will  trust 
them  for  guidance  as  to  the  knowledge  a  grammar  pupil  is  hkely  to 
have  of  the  Webster  key — or,  rather,  is  likely  to  appear  to  have;  for 
at  the  beginning  it  is  knowledge  of  the  English  alphabet  and  of 
English  pronunciations. 

Indeed,  no  intelligent  man  can  fail  to  recognize  that,  with  pupils 

been  an  increase  instead  of  decrease  in  the  percentage  of  symbols  wrongly  pro- 
nounced. 


46  THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

of  the  Seventh  and  Eighth  Grades,  and  with  college  students  as  well 
—that  is,  with  persons  for  whom  English  conventional  spellings  and 
pronunciation  values  had  become  instinctive — the  Webster  key, 
because  it  is  based  upon  alphabetic  and  pronunciation  values,  would 
start  with  a  distinct  advantage  over  a  genuinely  phonetic  key  like 
the  N.  E.  A.,  even  if  the  subjects  of  the  test  had  had  no  previous 
specific  instruction  in  the  Webster.  For  the  first  few  periods  of 
learning,  the  Webster  would  be  greatly  helped  by  the  fact  that  to 
every  one  who  can  read  English  a  number  of  the  Webster  symbols 
would  have  become  familiar  in  the  Webster  value  along  with  other 
values,  so  that  the  learner  has  merely  to  fix  in  mind  one  of  two  or 
three  already  known  values.  These  half-familiar  symbols  could  be 
quickly  learned.  Throughout  further  study  of  the  key  the  Webster 
would  still  find  some  help  in  the  fact  that  in  each  case  the  key-word 
is  a  familiar  English  word  containing  in  its  ordinary  spelling  the 
symbol  itself,  and  so  helps  the  learner  to  remember  it.  These  ad- 
vantages the  Webster  key  would  have  (with  pupils  advanced  beyond 
the  primary)  because  of  its  leaning  upon  the  English  alphabet- 
names  and  English  spelling  values — the  very  thing  about  it  that 
makes  it — chiefly  in  its  vowel  symbols — impossible  as  a  genuinely 
scientific  phonetic  key. 

On  the  other  hand,  consider  the  difficulty  that  some  of  the  N.  E.  A. 
vowel  signs  must  present  at  first  sight  to  any  one  familiar  with  the 
English  alphabet  names  and  with  English  conventional  spellings 
(cf.  pp.  23f.  above).  Think  of  the  shock  it  must  bring  when  for  the 
first  time  one  who  has  for  years  been  saying  "a  e  i  o  u  "  , 
as  in  the  English  alphabet,  is  told  that  e  is  not  e  but  a 
(Webster  symbols  are  used  because  the  matter  is  put  from  the  alpha- 
bet-name point  of  view),  I  is  not  I  but  e,  u  is  not  u  but  60. 
The  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  begins  the  race  with  a  heavy  handicap. 
But  Webster  adherents  (other  than  Dr.  Whipple)  will  perhaps 
say:  That  is  just  what  we  assert.  The  Webster  key  is  already  in 
good  part  familiar;  it  is  easier  to  learn  because  it  can  lean  upon  alpha- 
betic and  pronunciation  values  already  perfectly  familiar  to  the  pupil. 
The  N.  E.  A.  key  is  difficult  because  in  the  case  of  some  symbols  the 
pupil  must  turn  topsy-turvy  a  set  of  associations  as  familiar  to  him 
as  his  own  name.  It  is  like  asking  him  to  write  his  name  backwards. 
The  Webster  key  is  the  "natural"  key. 


THE  N.   E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET  47 

Dr.  Whipple,  indeed,  is  far  wrong  when  he  declares  that  the  sub- 
jects tested  in  his  experiments  had  only  "slight  knowledge  of  the 
Webster  key,"  and  worse  than  wrong  when  he  attempts  to  prove  it 
by  eliminating  only  a  part  of  the  symbols  that  were  certainly  in 
appreciable  measure  familiar. 

(b)  The  assumption  that  the  two  keys  were  practically  on  equal 
footing  is  an  error  on  Dr.  Whipple's  part  that  underlies  all  his  work 
and  destroys  the  force  of  his  conclusions.  Further  than  this,  the 
time  he  gave  to  the  experiments  was  inadequate  for  the  portion  of 
the  Webster  key  that  he  used  (the  most  puzzling  portion  of  that  key 
he  excluded),  and  for  the  N.  E.  A.  key,  taught  in  the  way  that  he 
taught  it,  the  time  was  farcical. 

In  Experiment  A  pupils  of  the  Seventh  and  Eighth  Grades  met 
for  study  five  times.  Each  time  they  pronounced  once,  following  the 
director,  each  of  a  series  of  44  or  46  sounds  and  key-words,  at  the 
same  time  looking  at  the  phonetic  symbol  of  the  sound  and  at  the 
key-word.  The  first  time  they  did  this,  their  attention  was  specific- 
ally called  to  the  form  of  the  symbol.  That  was  the  whole  of  their 
instruction.  At  the  end  of  it  the  Websters  were  far  from  complete 
mastery  of  their  key;  the  N.  E.  A.'s,  having  started  pretty  far  behind 
their  rivals,  were  also  far  from  complete  mastery  of  theirs.  In  the 
fourth  and  fifth  lessons,  however,  they  were  catching  up. 

Nor  did  the  college  students  in  Experiment  B  learn  thoroughly 
either  key;  none  of  them  reached  complete  mastery  of  even  the 
Webster.*  They  started  with  a  predisposition,  ingrained,  life-long, 
to  assign  to  the  symbols  the  English  values.  They  may  not  have 
consciously  learned  any  part  of  the  Webster  scheme;  but  in  much  of 
their  reading  and  study,  especially  in  the  lower  schools,  they  had  here 
and  there,  with  greater  or  less  frequency,  run  across  phonetic  symbols 
of  the  Webster  kind.  Six  of  those  symbols  ( a  e  I  5  u  oi ) 
were  perfectly  familiar  to  them,  or  at  least  learned  with  perfect  ease; 
eight  more  ( a  e  I  6  u  oo  doou)  should  not  have  taken 
more  than  a  second  thought.  The  students'  study  of  foreign 
languages  was  not  of  the  importance  in  this  test  that  Dr.  Whipple 
assumes;  for  such  knowledge  is  at  best  left-handed.     English  was 

*  On  page  19  Dr.  Whipple,  in  comment  on  Teat  3,  Experiment  B,  says  that  the 
considerable  number  of  "common  errors"  "gives  further  evidence  of  the  difficulty 
of  this  test."     It  gives  also  evidence  that  the  keys  were  neither  of  them  "learned." 


48  THE  N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

their  right-hand  speech,  in  constant  use  and  practice.  It  is  the 
English  value  that  unconsciously  and  instantly  sprang  up  before 
them.  The  key-words  were  familiar  English  words  in  which  the 
letter-portion  of  the  symbols  themselves  stood  in  the  Webster  value. 
That  the  key-words  were  not  shown  to  the  students  was  of  little  con- 
sequence because  persons  of  their  maturity  could  instantly  visualize 
the  words.  In  these  conditions  it  was  only  natural  that  to  attain  an 
errorless  recitation  would  require  more  repetitions  of  the  N.  E.  A. 
key  than  of  the  Webster;  and  that  the  knowledge  of  the  N.  E.  A. 
symbols,  having  been  on  the  average  for  a  shorter  time  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  students,  was  not  so  stable. 

That  this  was  the  state  of  things  with  the  college  students,  as  with 
the  grade  pupils,every  person  who  considers  the  matter  will  recognize; 
and  the  fact  is,  moreover,  proved  by  Dr.  Whipple's  figures  in  Ap- 
pendixes G  and  H,  where  it  is  brought  to  the  test  with  both  school 
children  and  college  students. 

The  various  tests  demonstrated  that  English-speaking  persons 
whose  habits  of  speech  have  become  fixed,  require  an  appreciable 
time  to  memorize  the  symbols  of  either  key;  and  that,  when  the  time 
is  inadequate,  the  less  familiar  key  suffers  more  than  the  other  from 
that  lack  of  time.  But  the  tests  do  not  show  which  key  is  the  hardest 
to  fix  completely  in  mind;  the  experiments  were  too  brief,  the  learn- 
ing periods  inadequate.  Nor  do  the  tests  show  how  the  N.  E.  A. 
alphabet  would  fare  in  primary  instruction  in  reading,  the  place 
where  the  child  should  get  its  first  knowledge  of  speech-sounds. 

Hundreds  of  trained  men  have  experimented  with  phonetic 
alphabets,  on  a  far  larger  scale  than  Dr.  Whipple  did.  The  experi- 
ments have  covered  a  wide  range  of  country,  in  hundreds  of  "labor- 
atories," and  a  wide  range  of  time  as  well.  The  results  of  these 
multiplied  thousands  of  experiments  led  the  army  of  experimenters 
all  to  the  same  conclusion — a  conclusion  just  the  opposite  of  that 
which  Dr.  Whipple's  brief  five  lessons  with  about  seventy  seventh 
and  eighth  grade  pupils  led  him  to  publish.  And  these  hundreds  of 
experimenters  who  do  not  agree  with  Dr.  Whipple  are  men  who 
know  the  material  that  they  are  working  in.  The  conclusions  that 
the  modern  language  teachers  of  all  Europe  and  practically  all  the 
modern  language  teachers  of  Great  Britain,  and  further  that  many 
teachers  of  the  mother-tongue,  too,  in  all  those  countries,  have  reached 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  49 

— the  conclusions  of  these  hundreds  of  highly  trained  and  experienced 
teachers,  based  upon  an  extended  experience  for  each  of  them,  is 
rather  more  trustworthy  than  those  arrived  at  in  one  scientific  labora- 
tory, on  the  basis  of  one  week's  work  with  some  seventy  school 
children  and  a  few  hours'  work  with  three  dozen  or  fewer  college 
undergraduates.  The  matured  opinion  of  these  hundreds  of  teach- 
ers is  that  a  rational  phonetic  alphabet — the  N.  E.  A.  kind — is  the 
most  efficient  means  by  which  to  instruct  pupils  in  the  art  of  pro- 
nunciation, the  easiest  kind  of  alphabet  to  learn  intelligently  and  to 
apply. 

(c)  These  teachers,  it  should  be  repeated,  know  something  of 
phonetics,  of  the  nature  and  relations  of  speech-sounds,  of  the  diffi- 
culties inherent  in  their  task,  of  the  specific  effects  desired  to  be  at- 
tained by  a  phonetic  alphabet,  of  the  specific  qualities  needed  in 
such  an  alphabet  to  make  it  an  effective  instrument,  and  of  the 
specific  ways  in  which  such  an  instrument  is  to  be  handled  in  order 
to  make  it  efficient. 

It  is  not  apparent  that  those  who  conducted  the  Cornell  experi- 
ments were  familiar  with  the  material  in  their  hands.  Indeed,  Dr. 
Whipple  himself  shows  a  lamentable  uncertainty  in  the  phonetic 
values  of  some  N.  E.  A.  symbols  and  the  normal  usages  of  educated 
Englishmen  and  Americans  (cf.  pp.  13ff.  above);  and  he  or  his  asso- 
ciates showed  some  unfamiliarity  with  the  difficulty  that  every  one 
who  is  not  a  trained  phonetician  has  in  recognizing  and  reproducing 
speech-sounds  by  imitation  alone  (cf.  pp.  27f.  above).  In  illustration 
of  that  difficulty,  look  at  Dr.  Whipple's  Appendix  B,  page  29  of  his 
pamphlet.  In  every  case  where  a  pupil  translated  an  o-sign 
(6  6  6)  into  the  sound  a  or  a  (Webster  a.  a  ),  a  sound 
heard  in  the  first  syllable  of  artistic  ,  it  must  be  interpreted  as  an 
intention  of  the  pupil  to  give  the  so-called  "short  o  "  of  the  key- 
words odd  not .  The  great  majority  in  this  country  pronounce 
these  words  not  with  the  sound  represented  by  the  N.  E.  A.  symbol 
e  ( Webster  6  or  6 ),  but  with  the  clear  vowel  sound  of 
artistic  .  To  expect  pupils  who  have  this  habit  of  pronunciation  to 
recognize  and  correct  their  deviation  from  the  value  assumed  in  both 
keys  to  be  the  standard  value  of  the  o  in  not ,  by  a  process  of 
merely  hearing  the  sound  five  times,  is  to  expect  the  impossible. 

Further  evidence  that  the  experimenter  was  not  in  position  to 


50  THE  N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

direct,  properly,  experiments  in  phonetics  appears  in  his  "Directions 
for  Conducting  Experiments  with  Phonetic  Keys,"  Appendix  I,  p. 
37.  In  the  section  (4a)  under  the  heading  Method  (p.  38)  one  reads: 
"  Now,  the  vowels,  a  ,  e  ,  i ,  o  ,  u  ,  have  different  sounds, 
as  you  know,  like  'ay'  and  'ah'  ,  'ee'  and  'eh' ,  and  so 
forth."  But  a  e  i  o  u  are  letters,  not  vowels.  A  vowel  has 
one  measurably  fixed  sound — it  is  a  sound.  To  say  that  "the  vowel 
a  has  different  sounds,"  when  you  mean  that  "the  letter  a  repre- 
sents different  sounds,"  is  to  use  terms  unscientific,  and  confusing  to 
any  one  attempting  to  get  clear  notions  about  the  relations  between 
sound  and  sound,  and  between  sound  and  letter.  No  experiments 
with  phonetics,  directed  by  persons  who  use  so  loosely  the  terms  of 
the  science,  can  be  accepted  as  trustworthy.  In  several  tests  it 
appears  that  the  experimenter  does  not  realize  that  it  makes  any 
difference  whether  he  gave  the  letter-name  or  the  sound-value  of  the 
symbols  he  spoke  of;  which  would  not  be  surprising  in  an  experimenter 
who  is  not  at  the  same  time  a  phonetician,  but  should  be  surprising 
in  an  experimenter  who  is  a  psychologist. 

What  is  necessary  for  the  subjects  of  experiments  with  phonetic 
keys  is  some  authoritative  and  competent  instruction  in  speech- 
sounds,  some  training  by  practice  in  the  recognition  of  the  smaller 
differences  in  sounds  and  in  the  accurate  reproduction  of  those  sounds 
— some  training  of  ear  and  speech-organs  by  an  instructor  who  knows 
something  of  phonetics.  Some  of  the  Webster  symbols  would  have 
fared  better  if  the  subjects  under  test  had  had  proper  instruction. 

But  the  N.  E.  A.  key  fared  far  worse  because  there  was  no  at- 
tempt to  present  it  on  its  most  telling  merits,  namely,  its  inherent 
simplicity  and  logical  consistency.  These  are  qualities  that  make  it 
incomparable  with  any  key  of  the  Webster  kind  (cf.  p.  17  above). 
It  is  easy  to  learn  because,  when  the  eleven  or  twelve  simple  elements 
of  the  vowel-scheme  are  once  mastered,  the  whole  English  vowel- 
scheme  is  in  the  learner's  possession;  for  he  needs  only  to  combine 
the  elements  in  a  fixed  and  consistent  way  to  represent  the  varied 
values  of  the  twelve  English  vowel  sounds  not  interpreted  by  the 
fundamental  eleven  signs.  His  instinctive,  unconscious-acting 
rational  sense  does  half  the  work.  To  throw  away  the  help  that 
reason  gives,  and  to  learn  the  N.  E.  A.  vowel  system  in  the  same  way 
that  one  must  learn  the  Webster — that  is,  by  sheer  force  of  memory 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  51 

— is  like  resorting  to  forge  fires  and  sledge  hammers  when  the  subtle 
electric  current  would  weld  the  metals  with  a  fraction  of  the  labor 
and  time.  That  is  what  the  conductors  of  the  Whipple  experiments 
did.  They  did  not  show  their  pupils  how  to  learn  and  how  to  use 
the  N.  E.  A.  key. 

One  may  have  in  one's  hand  a  delicate  instrument,  but  that 
doesn't  mean  that  one  knows  how  to  use  it.  A  chemist,  however 
competent  in  his  own  sphere,  can  not  step  into  a  watch  factory  and 
at  once  set  to  using  the  watch-maker's  fine  machinery  without  dis- 
astrous results;  and  when  such  results  follow  his  attempt,  they  can 
not  be  interpreted  as  sufficient  ground  for  condemning  the  machinery 
itself. 

Dr.  Whipple  recognizes  that  his  investigations  leave  something 
to  be  desired  in  thoroughness  and  completeness.  He  does  not,  how- 
ever, appear  to  realize  how  inadequate  and  one-sided  they  were. 
Not  five  days  but  a  year  or  two  in  time  is  necessary.  The  experi- 
ment should  be  made  not  with  pupils  or  students  who  have  already 
ingrained  in  them  associations  that  years  of  use  of  the  English  con- 
ventional spellings  have  fixed,  but  with  pupils  who  are  beginning  to 
learn  the  language — with  children  in  the  primary  reading  classes,  or 
with  American-born  children  of  foreign  parentage  who  have  not  yet 
fixed  the  one  language  in  mind  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other.  And, 
above  all,  the  experiment  must  be  in  the  hands  of  conductors  whose 
training  fits  them  for  the  specific  task — of  language  teachers  who 
know  something  of  phonetics,  who  know  how  to  teach  it,  and  who 
have  mastered  the  key  that  they  attempt  to  use. 

In  short,  any  experiments  testing  two  or  more  specific  phonetic 
keys,  should  be  directed  by  expert  phoneticians,  and  carried  out  by 
men  who  represent  equal  knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with  the  keys 
in  question. 

It  will  take  some  time  to  make  such  an  experiment;  but  it  is 
better  to  walk  six  blocks  for  an  accurate  watch  than  five  blocks  for 
a  poor  one. 

But  overtopping  all  these  fundamental  errors,  there  was  yet  a 
fourth  error  vitiating  all  of  Dr.  Whipple's  experiments,  which  one 
finds  it  hard  to  excuse.  Dr.  Whipple  used  in  his  work  the  portion 
of  the  Webster  vowel  symbols  which  is  least  open  to  objection.  He 
eliminated  from  both  keys  a  portion,  namely,  the  symbols  for  the 


52  THE  N.  E.   A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

"obscure"  vowels,  in  which  the  superiority  of  the  N.  E.  A.  key  is 
most  marked  ,the  confusion  of  the  Webster  most  trying  (cf  .pp.  12-14 
above).  Whatever  the  grounds  for  the  action,  it  was  wholly  un- 
warranted, and  irretrievably  biased  the  results.  The  Webster 
symbols  for  the  obscure  vowels  (agou<Xeowae) 
are  five  times  the  number  of  the  N.  E.  A.  (a  1 ),  and  indefinitely 
more  confusing.  Let  some  mathematician  figure  out  how  many 
more  permutations  are  possible  with  a  series  of  ten  than  with  a 
series  of  two.  Furthermore,  some  of  the  Webster  symbols  appear 
now  in  the  value  of  a  and  now  of  i  ;  so  that  it  is  as  impossible 
for  a  phonetician  as  for  a  psychologist  to  interpret  such  symbols 
when  standing  alone.  Only  when  such  a  symbol  is  recognized  as 
representing  a  sound  in  a  word  whose  pronunciation  one  already 
knows,  can  one  pronounce  the  symbol  itself.  As  a  guide  to  the 
pronunciation  of  unfamiliar  words,  then,  it  is  futile.  If  Dr.  Whipple 
excluded  these  symbols  on  his  own  motion,  and  with  full  knowledge 
of  what  he  was  doing,  it  is  hard  to  understand  his  action  on  grounds 
creditable  to  him. 

One  must  condemn  also,  as  ingenuous  and  shuffling — to  choose 
mild  terms — a  phonetic  alphabet  for  general  use  that  professes  to 
find,  and  provides  symbols  to  represent,  ten  varieties  of  sound 
where,  except  in  special  expert  phonetic  investigations,  only  two  are 
recognized  as  existing  in  current  good  usage.  Such  an  alphabet 
flatters  the  unwary  into  believing  that  they  make  certain  "finer  dis- 
tinctions in  sound."  Many  others  than  Dr.  Whipple  are  no  doubt 
victims  of  the  Webster  "obscure"  brotherhood. 

In  their  effect  upon  Dr.  Whipple's  tests,  the  ten  Webster  symbols, 
if  admitted,  would  spell  disaster  to  the  Webster  key.  Admit  them. 
Let  a  rightful  proportion  of  the  tests  involve  the  use  of  them.  The 
case  of  the  Webster  key  would  be  hopeless!  If  this  should  prove  to 
be  the  fact  which  explains  why  they  were  eliminated,  the  procedure 
has  no  palliating  feature.  It  would  be  with  pain  and  humiliation 
that  one  discovers  that  such  a  thing  —  the  suppression  of  an  incrimi- 
nating portion  of  evidence — could  be  possible  to  an  American  man  of 
science.  Nothing  can  excuse  Dr.  Whipple's  action,  except  his  ap- 
parent ignorance  of  the  field  into  which  he  had  ventured. 

A  famous  saying  of  Gaston  Paris  expresses  the  ideal  of  the 
scientist:  "I  profess  absolutely  and  without  reserve  the  doctrine  that 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  53 

science  has  no  other  object  than  the  truth,  the  truth  for  itself,  with 
no  regard  for  the  consequences  good  or  evil,  lamentable  or  happy, 
that  this  truth  may  have  in  its  application.  He  who,  through  any 
patriotic,  religious,  or  even  moral  motive,  allows  to  himself,  in  the  con- 
clusions that  he  draws,  the  slightest  dissimulation,  the  slightest 
alteration,  is  unworthy  to  have  his  place  in  the  great  laboratory 
where  integrity  is  a  more  indispensable  title  to  admission  than 
skill." 

Dr.  Whipple's  experiments,  testing  two  phonetic  alphabets  on 
such  unequal  terms,  running  through  a  period  altogether  too  brief 
to  attain  any  stable  results,  and  conducted  in  a  way  to  deprive  one 
of  those  alphabets  of  the  advantage  of  the  very  qualities  in  it  that 
give  it  superiority,  can  lead  to  no  conclusions  acceptable  to  intelligent 
and  fair-minded  judges. 

(2) 

What  if  some  of  these  conclusions  are  not  justified  by  the  ex- 
perimenter's own  figures?  The  experiments  must  be  examined  in 
some  detail. 

Experiment  A 

The  error  that  Dr.  Whipple  falls  into  when  he  eliminates  (Whip- 
ple, p.  9)  only  a  portion  of  those  Webster  symbols  that  must  have 
been  pretty  familiar  to  the  pupils,  has  already  been  pointed  out  (pp. 
42ff.  above).  Consider  further  the  experimenter's  use  of  the  figures 
that  he  obtained  from  Tests  1  and  2  in  Experiment  A,  and  published 
in  Table  1,  p.  5,  of  his  pamphlet. 

About  seventy  grammar  pupils  had  one  learning  exercise  a  day 
for  five  days.  The  exercise  consisted  of  looking  at  a  phonetic  alpha- 
bet (symbols  alongside  key-words)  while  they  repeated,  in  concert, 
following  the  instructor,  the  sounds  that  were  represented  by  the 
symbols,  and  the  key-words  that  accompanied  each  symbol.  At  the 
end  of  the  third  learning  exercise  the  pupils  were  subjected  to  Test 
1,  and  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  to  Test  2.  The  tests  were  the  same: 
"The  method  was  to  display,  one  at  a  time,  in  order,  a  series  of  en- 
larged symbols,  .  .  .  and  to  request  the  pupils  to  write  the  key- 
words that  had  been  learned  to  illustrate  the  several  symbols." 


54  THE  N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

Now,  thirty-eight  of  the  pupils  were  working  with  the  Webster 
key.  It  is  evident  that  the  sources  from  which  these  drew  their 
interpretation  of  the  Webster  symbols  were — (1)  The  alphabet  names 
of  the  letters,  which  were  readily  associated  with  the  macron- 
marked  symbols.  (2)  Diacritic  marks  that  were  up  to  that  time 
in  a  measure  unfamiliar;  for,  it  being  an  exercise  of  memory  alone, 
anything  new  and  striking  and  at  the  same  time  clear  in  the  symbol 
form  would  fix  the  attention  sharply  enough  to  engrave  the  symbol 
with  more  or  less  durability  upon  the  mind.  Hence  it  is  probable 
that  the  pupils  were  relatively  less  impressed  by  the  more  familiar 
macron  and  breve  than  by  the  dieresis  ( ••  ),  the  dot  (  •  )  and 
the  tilde  (  ~  ).  The  last  especially  ingratiated  itself;  its  curves 
are  beautiful.  It  probably  happened  also  that  the  dieresis  and  the 
dot,  coming,  as  they  did,  over  symbols  near  the  beginning  of  the  list, 
stood  a  better  chance  of  sticking  in  the  memory  than  the  macron 
plus  dot  of  the  symbol  6  .  The  circumflex  may  have  failed  because 
it  is  not  distinctive  nor  clear  enough;  it  may  have  been  confused 
with  the  macron  and  breve;  it  appeared  over  several  of  the  symbols, 
and  apparently  led  to  some  confusion.  (3)  The  pronunciation 
value  of  certain  combinations  assuredly  helped  to  associate  symbol 
with  key-word. 

On  the  other  side,  thirty-one  pupils  studied  the  N.  E.  A.  key.  In 
this  key  four  symbols  had  values  other  than  the  alphabet-names  the 
pupils  would  have  naturally  associated  with  them:  a  e  I  u  ; 
and  the  N.  E.  A.  values  of  two  of  these  ( e  i )  would  at  first 
arouse  consternation  and  resentment  in  the  minds  of  the  pupils. 
There  were  seven  new  vowel  signs  ( a  a  ai  e  e  0  u ; 
which  would  have  reduced  themselves  to  three  if  the  key  had  been 
properly  put  before  the  pupils),  and  three  partly  new  (  au  iu  ei  ; 
these  would  have  been  self-explanatory  if  the  pupils  had  been  prop- 
erly instructed).  One  of  the  N.  E.  A.  consonant-signs  also  was 
totally  strange     ( g ),     and  another  half  new     (  rj  )  . 

Apparently  the  N.  E.  A.  group  had  before  them  distinctly  the 
harder  task:  more  symbols  that  were  totally  new,  and  some  that 
were  directly  subversive  of  associations  fixed  from  their  childhood 
by  the  abc  names.  A  test  at  the  beginning  of  the  experiment  would 
have  shown  whether  any  of  the  Webster  symbols  were  (as  seems  to  a 
layman  probable)  half  known,  or  better,  at  the  start.    One  would 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  55 

then  have  had  also  a  longer  period  in  which  to  compare  the  progress 
of  the  two  groups. 

Fortunately,  Dr.  Whipple  himself  furnishes  us  data,  in  Appen- 
dixes G  and  H,  from  which  to  infer  the  probable  conditions  upon 
which  his  Experiment  A  began.  In  Experiment  C  he  put  before 
thirty-eight  fourth  grade  school  children,  who — so  far  as  Dr.  Whipple 
tells  us — had  had  no  instruction  in  either  key,  a  number  of  phonetic 
spellings  using  the  N.  E.  A.  symbols,  a  I  e  u ,  and  another 
list  introducing  the  symbols  ai  u  au  .  He  found  that  the  words 
in  the  first  list  were  pronounced  with  the  vowels  e  ai  I  iu 
(Webster  a,  i  e  u )  a  total  of  J+26  times;  with  the  vowels  a  I 
e  u  (that  is,  with  the  correct  N.  E.  A.  values)  22  times.  That  is 
to  say,  about  twenty  times  to  one  these  N.  E.  A.  symbols  were  in- 
terpreted by  the  alphabet-names  of  the  letters;  that  is,  virtually,  as 
if  they  were  Webster  symbols.  (The  correction  that  Dr.  Whipple 
makes  in  his  footnote,  p.  22,  is  incorporated  in  these  figures.) 

With  words  containing  the  symbols  ai  u  au  ,  the  children 
gave  the  N.  E.  A.  values  only  44  times,  some  other  value  405  times. 
Dr.  Whipple  states  that  the  symbol  ai  was  in  200  cases  [out  of 
252]  interpreted  as  e  (Webster  a, ),  and  the  symbol  u  66 
times  [out  of  97]  was  read  as  u  (Webster  u  ).  These  were,  of 
course,  not  Webster  readings,  but  simply  attempts  to  give  the  pro- 
nunciation of  English  words  suggested  by  the  phonetic  words.  The 
N.  E.  A.  pail ,  for  example,  was  pronounced  as  if  it  were  the 
word  pail ,  vain  as  the  word  vain.  This  is  especially  noticed 
in  the  words  involving  the  symbol  au  .  The  symbol  was  28  times 
(out  of  the  44  times  that  the  children  happened  upon  a  correct 
N.  E.  A.  reading)  pronounced  with  its  correct  value;  the  phonetic 
words  aut  laud  could  not  well  be  understood  by  the  cliildren 
otherwise  than  as  the  English  words  out  and  loud  .  From  Dr. 
Whipple's  own  figures,  then,  it  appears  that  American  grammar 
school  children  set  out  to  learn  the  N.  E.  A.  key  with  a  strong  pre- 
disposition to  interpret  its  symbols  in  their  alphabetic  and  pronun- 
ciation values,  which  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  symbols  are  identical 
with  the  Webster  values.  And  yet  Dr.  Whipple  speaks  of  their 
"slight  knowledge  of  the  Webster  key"! 

It  is  assured,  then,  that  the  N.  E.  A.  group  of  Cortland  seventh 
and  eighth  grade  school  children  had  before  them,  at  the  beginning 


56  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

of  Experiment  A,  many  more  symbols  to  learn  than  the  Websters 
had;  that  the  Webster  group,  on  the  contrary,  would  "naturally" 
interpret  the  corresponding  Webster  symbols  in  the  Webster  values. 
It  would  seem,  then,  that  the  N.  E.  A.  group=must~have  learned, 
during  the  first  three  lessons,  a  greater  number  of  their  symbols 
than  the  Websters  learned  of  theirs  in  the  same  time.  Furthermore, 
several  of  the  N.  E.  A.  symbols  had  to  be  learned  in  values  that 
directly  contradicted  and  subverted  associations  that  these  children 
had  fixed  in  mind  to  a  degree  almost  instinctive. 

Considering  the  difficulty  of  their  task,  their  accomplishment 
speaks  with  astonishing  emphasis  for  them  or  for  the  key  that  they 
were  learning. 

The  results  of  Tests  1  and  2,  taken  at  jthe  close  of  the  third  and 
the  fifth  lesson  respectively,  show  how  far  each  group^had  progressed 
at  the  time  of  the  test,  and  hence  how  fast  each  was  moving.  This 
was  the  object  of  the  tests — "to  measure  the  speed  of  the  memor- 
izing" (Whipple,  p.  3,  last  line).*  (Test  4  was  "to  measure  the 
permanence  of  the  memorizing,"  and  Tests  5  and  6j"to  measure  the 
facility  with  which  the  keys  could  be  used. ") 

Dr.  Whipple  summarizes  the  results  of  Tests  1  and  2  in  Table  1 

(P-  "/  •  Number  Average  number  of  errors  made 

of  pupils  in  Test  1  in  Test  2 

Webster  Key  38  10.16  5.37 

N.  E.  A.  Key  31  14.97  9.20* 

Then  he  gives  to  these  figures  the  following  interpretation,  em- 
phasizing his  discovery  by  the  use  of  italics:  "The  results  indicate 
plainly  that,  after  three  learning  lessons,  .  .  .  the  average  pupil  makes 
10.16  errors  with  the  Webster  Key  as  compared  with  14-97  errors  with 
the  Proposed  Key,  or,  in  other  words,  47.3  per  cent  more  errors  are  made 
with  the  Proposed  Key."  .  .  .  "At  the  end  oj  the  fifth  lesson,  the  aver- 
age pupil  makes  5.37  errors  with  the  Webster  Key  as  compared  with 
9.20  errors  with  the  Proposed  Key,  or  in  other  words,  71.3  per  cent 
more  errors  are  made  with  the  Proposed  Key." 

Let  us  repeat  the  closing  words  of  each  sentence  in  order  duly  to 
impress  upon  the  reader  Dr.  Whipple's  discovery: 

*  With  an  apparent  shifting  of  ground  that  may  confuse  readers  of  the  pamphlet, 
the  author  does  not  use  the  term  "speed"  in  his  later  descriptions  of  Tests  1,  2  and 
3,  nor  in  Table  1. 

*  Misprinted  9.50  in  Dr.  Whipple's  Table  1. 


THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  57 

(After  the  third  lesson)  Iff  .S  per  cent  more  errors  are  made  with  the 
Proposed  Key;  (after  the  fifth  lesson)  71.3  per  cent  more  errors  are 
made  with  the  Proposed  Key. 

Evidently  the  N.  E.  A.  children  are  rapidly  going  to  the  bad, 
whither  of  course  the  N.  E.  A.  key  ought  to  follow !  If  the  two  groups 
had  taken  two  more  lessons  at  the  pace  they  exhibited  in  the  fourth 
and  fifth  lessons,  the  results  would  have  been  unique.  The  Webster 
group  would  have  reduced  their  errors  by  an  average  of  10.16  minus 
5.37,  which  is  4.79;  and  consequently  after  the  seventh  lesson  would 
have  made  an  average  of  5.37  minus  4.79  errors,  which  is  .58  errors. 
The  N.  E.  A.  group  would  have  reduced  their  errors  by  an  average 
of  14.97  minus  9.20,  which  is  5.77;  and  so  would  after  the  seventh 
lesson  have  made  an  average  of  9.20  minus  5.77  errors,  which  is  3.43 
errors.  In  other  words,  about  600  per  cent  more  errors  would  have  been 
made  with  the  Proposed  Key  ! 

Dr.  Whipple  ought  to  have  carried  the  experiment  to  a  finality. 
He  could  easily  have  had  the  Webster  per  cent  of  superiority  burst 
through  the  ceiling  and  shoot  up  into  the  heavens,  or  the 
N.  E.  A.  inferiority  descend  in  the  other  direction  to  quite  abysmal 
depths. 

He  must  have  made  a  mistake  somewhere.  To  a  layman,  ex- 
pert in  neither  mathematics  nor  psychology,  the  case  seems  simply 
this:  In  two  lessons  the  Webster  pupils  reduced  their  errors  by  an 
average  of  4.79;  in  two  lessons  the  N.  E.  A.  pupils  reduced  their 
errors  by  an  average  of  5.77.  In  two  lessons,  then,  the  N.  E.  A- 
pupils  reduced  their  errors  by  a  greater  number  than  the  Websters 
did — namely,  by  as  much  as  5.77  exceeds  4.79,  which  is  .98;  and  .98 
is  20.5  per  cent  of  4.79.  In  other  words,  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  lessons 
the  N.  E.  A.  group  are  progressing,  in  memorizing  their  key,  20.5  per 
cent  faster  than  the  Webster  group  in  memorizing  theirs! 

The  error  that  Dr.  Whipple  fell  into,  or  was  thrust  into,  lies  in 
not  recognizing  that,  to  measure  the  speed  that  either  group  was 
making,  one  must  compare  the  position  of  the  group  at  one  stage  of 
learning  with  its  own  position  at  another  stage.  Dr.  Whipple  should 
have  moved  horizontally,  not  vertically,  in  his  Table  1.* 

*  Even  if  Dr.  Whipple  were  measuring,  not  the  speed  of  memorizing,  but  the 
comparative  mastery  of  their  keys  shown  by  the  two  groups,  his  method  is  wrong, 
as  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  his  percentages  mount  toward  infinity.     The  rela- 


68  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

One  may  feel  justified  in  recognizing  that  the  N.  E.  A.  pupils 
must,  in  the  first  three  lessons,  have  already  much  reduced  the  large 
handicap  that  the  considerations  advanced  on  pp.  42-45  indicate 
as  resting  upon  them  at  the  beginning;  in  the  fourth  and  fifth 
lessons,  for  which  we  have  the  records,  the  N.  E.  A.  pupils  made 
faster  progress  by  20.5  per  cent  than  their  rivals. 

And  they  were  working  with  a  key  said  to  be  "pedagogically 
inferior"! 

One  must  turn  to  some  psychologist  for  an  explanation  of  the 
enigma.  A  psychological  interpretation  of  Dr.  Whipple's  various 
tables  would  be  valuable.  A  mathematical  interpretation  (Tests  1 
and  2),  truer  than  Dr.  Whipple's  own,  is  within  reach  of  every  one 
who  has  passed  percentage  in  his  school  arithmetic. 

Another  arithmetical  problem  may  be  propounded:  Two  boys 
are  playing  in  the  yard,  when  they  are  told  to  go  to  the  wood-pile. 
One  boy  is  10.16  feet  distant  from  the  wood,  the  other  14.97  feet 
distant.  They  take  an  equal  number  of  steps  in  a  given  time,  but 
the  nearer  boy  moves  two  feet  and  the  other  two  feet  five  inches 
(about  20.5  per  cent  more)  with  each  step.  Which  boy  is  moving 
faster  toward  the  wood-pile? 

And  which  boy  will  saw  more  wood  when  he  gets  there? 

How  shall  one  interpret  the  results  of  Test  3?  It  followed  one 
day  after  Test  2,  and  was  just  the  reverse  of  that  test.  In  Test  2 
pupils  were  translating  symbols  into  sounds;  in  Test  3  they  were 
translating  sounds  into  symbols. 

In  the  first  place,  one  must  know  how  the  test  was  conducted. 
When  the  experimenter,  for  example,  said:  "Write  the  symbol  (or 
phonetic  letter)  for  the  a  in  ale,"  he  should  have  said,  "for 
the  vowel-sound  e  [Webster  a.  ]  in  ale".  And  what  did  he  say 
next?  When  he  told  the  pupil  to  "write  the  symbol  for  the  a  in 
care,"  did  he  say  "for  the  sound  a  [Webster  a]  in  care," 
giving  the  sound  and  not  the  alphabet-name  of  the  letter?  Or  did 
he  give  the  alphabet-name,  saying,  "Write  the  symbol  for  the  a 
[  e  ]  in  care  "?  If  he  did  the  latter,  the  test  must  be  thrown  out 
of  court  without  more  ado;  it  has  not  the  slightest  case — not  a  sem- 

tive  degree  of  mastery  is  to  be  found  by  comparing  what  the  two  groups  had 
learned,  not  what  they  had  not  learned  —  that  is,  it  is  to  be  measured  by  .how  much 
they  got  right,  not  by  how  much  they  got  wrong. 


THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  69 

blance  of  one.  A  phonetician  would  recognize  that  the  matter  has  a 
vital  bearing  on  the  problem;  a  psychologist  ought  to  recognize  it. 

But  assuming  that  the  test  was  properly  conducted,  what  shall 
be  done  with  the  figures?  Interpret  them  as  Dr.  Whipple  does  those 
of  Test  2,  and  get  Dr.  Whipple's  misleading  "48.5  more  errors  are 
made  with  the  Proposed  Key"?  The  only  way  to  show  the  "speed 
with  which"  either  group  "is  memorizing  its  key"  is  to  compare  the 
results  of  a  test  made  at  a  given  stage,  to  show  where  the  children 
stand  at  that  moment,  with  the  results  of  a  like  test  made  with  the 
same  children  at  another  stage  in  the  learning.  But  Dr.  Whipple 
has  given  no  earlier  test  like  Test  3.  All  that  one  can  say  is  this: 
One  day  after  making  an  average  of  5.37  errors  in  turning  symbols 
into  sounds,  the  Webster  pupils  made  an  average  of  6. OS  errors — 
that  is,  an  increase  of  .71  errors — in  turning  sounds  into  symbols. 
One  day  after  making  an  average  of  9.20  errors  in  turning  symbols 
into  sounds,  the  N.  E.  A.  pupils  made  an  average  of  9.03  errors — 
that  is,  a  decrease  of  .17  errors — in  turning  sounds  into  symbols. 

"Test  4  was  administered  one  week  after  Test  3,  and  was  designed 
to  measure,  by  the  number  of  errors  committed,  the  relative  perma- 
nence of  the  associations  in  the  two  keys  after  a  lapse  of  one  week 
during  which  there  was  no  more  learning  and  during  which  the  keys 
were  not  used  or  referred  to." 

Does  Dr.  Whipple  think  that  none  of  these  American  children 
had  intelligence  or  curiosity  enough  to  observe  during  that  week  some 
things  that  they  might  not  have  observed  before?  In  their  textbooks 
in  spelling,  reading,  history,  geography  (where,  we  are  told,  the  Web- 
ster key  is  in  common  use),  they  must  have  met  Webster  respell- 
ings.  Did  they  come  upon  N.  E.  A.  respellings  anywhere?  Did  none 
of  them  tell  at  home  of  what  new  work  they  were  doing  in  the  school? 
And  did  no  one  there  get  down  the  Webster  family  dictionary? 

And  Dr.  Whipple's  italicized  conclusion  is  so  stated  as  to  be  cap- 
able of  quite  false  interpretation.  Would  Dr.  Whipple  allow  one  to 
understand  him  as  saying  that  the  N.  E.  A.  pupils  had  forgot  a 
greater  proportion  of  their  new  knowledge  than  the  Websters  had 
of  theirs — a  proportion  greater  by  55.6  per  cent?  If  he  did  not 
mean  to  leave  open  that  interpretation  of  his  words,  he  should  have 
made  his  statement  clearer.  The  only  way  in  which  to  estimate  the 
percentage  of  what  either  group  forgot,  is,  first,  to  find  out  what  it 


60  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

had  learned,  and  then  to  estimate  its  loss  on  that  basis.  Each 
group's  measure  of  lost  knowledge  must  be  compared  with  its  own 
measure  of  gained  knowledge. 

One  is  tempted  to  ask,  sometimes,  whether  Dr.  Whipple's  method 
of  arriving  at  his  italicized  percentages  is  his  own  or  another's;  one 
can  not  avoid  recognizing  that  they  often  exaggerate,  and  thus  mis- 
represent, the  actual  outcome  of  the  experiments. 

There  is  no  question  of  the  fact  that  the  N.  E.  A.  pupils  were 
likely  to  make  more  errors  in  Test  4  than  the  Websters.  Any 
psychologist  could  explain  why.  They  had  had  five  lessons  on  a 
phonetic  key  in  some  details  new,  in  some  details  strange,  in  some 
revolutionary.  They  had  not  been  shown  how  to  learn  nor  how  to 
apply  that  key,  which  would  have  opened  the  fortress  with  ease,  but 
had  to  make  the  assault  by  sheer  force  of  memory.  In  spite  of  their 
faster  progress,  they  had  not,  during  the  previous  week,  got  then- 
alphabet  so  well  in  hand  as  the  Websters  had  got  theirs.  If  they 
tried,  as  in  most  cases  American  curiosity  would  have  led  them  to 
try,  to  find  out  something  about  the  N.  E.  A.  key  outside  of  the 
learning  periods,  they  were  balked  in  the  effort.  Naturally,  with 
their  key  not  so  well  learned,  they  could  not  retain  it  so  well.  Natu- 
rally, they  were  more  easily  confused.  Naturally,  they  were  more 
easily  thrown  into  panic.  If  the  director  of  the  test,  in  calling  for 
the  symbols,  used  the  letter-name  and  not  the  sound  alone  of  the 
vowel  in  the  key- word,  the  children  were  misled  outright. 

Naturally,  they  suffered  a  more  severe  defeat.  But  their  defeat 
proves  nothing,  except  that  they  were  improperly  directed  in  the 
learning  and  in  the  application  of  their  key,  and  were  not  given  a 
thorough,  a  close  enough  knowledge  of  it.  They  were  taken  only 
five  blocks  instead  of  six,  and  at  a  distance  of  one  block  away  they 
could  not  tell  the  time  marked  by  any  watch,  however  accurate  the 
watch  was,  and  however  clear  the  figures  on  its  face. 

Test  5  need  not  be  reviewed;  Dr.  Whipple  dismisses  it. 

Test  6  is  another  matter.  It  "was  administered  three  days  after 
Test  3.  ...  It  consisted  in  actual  tests  of  pronunciation  of  the 
characters  peculiar  to  the  two  keys.  .  .  .  The  Proposed  Key  was 
represented  by  23  symbols  peculiar  to  it,  the  Webster  by  its  symbols 
for  the  same  sounds,  plus  a  24th  symbol,  [that  for]  the     e    of  maker." 

Test  6  offered  a  much  increased  latitude  for  error  over  that  of 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  61 

previous  tests.  Instead  of  recalling  words  and  writing  them  down, 
the  children  were  required  to  recall  and  to  reproduce  sounds,  and 
the  experimenter  to  recognize  and  classify  those  sounds.  Now,  the 
difficulty  of  making  given  speech-sounds  correctly  is,  for  child  or 
adult,  very  great  unless  the  person  has  had  pretty  thorough  training 
of  the  speech-organs;  and  the  accurate  and  unfailing  recognition  of 
speech-sounds,  when  made,  lies  only  in  the  power  of  a  phonetician. 
With  the  best  intentions  and  will  on  the  part  of  both  children  and 
experimenter  in  this  test,  there  was  room  for  repeated  error  in  the 
making  and  the  recognition  of  sounds.  Whatever  measure  of  un- 
certainty in  this  way  arose  in  the  child's  mind  naturally  tended  to 
lead  him  to  take  refuge  in  his  assured  knowledge  of  alphabetic  and 
pronunciation  values. 

The  pupils  tested  with  the  N.  E.  A.  key  were,  as  already  recog- 
nized, less  at  home  in  their  key  than  the  other  group.  The  tests 
were  oral,  and  therefore  more  trying  on  the  nerves.  The  time  was 
restricted;  it  averaged  five  minutes  (supposing  no  time  lost  in  the 
exchange  of  pupil  for  pupil)  for  each  child,  and  about  thirteen  seconds 
for  each  symbol.  It  is  clear  that  the  disadvantage  under  which 
the  N.  E.  A.  pupils  labored — acquainted  with  fewer  of  their  symbols, 
having  on  the  average  a  shorter  acquaintance  with  each  symbol, 
some  of  those  symbols  being  in  direct  contradiction  to  all  their 
previous  ten  years'  home  and  school  experience  with  the  English 
alphabet — must  have  been  appreciably  augmented;  to  what  extent, 
a  psychologist  might  say.  It  is  only  reasonable  to  expect  such  a 
result  as  the  test  gave. 

The  results  of  all  the  tests  in  Experiment  A,  given  in  detail  in 
Dr.  Whipple's  Appendixes  A  and  B  (pp.  27-30),  and  summarized  in 
Tables  1  and  2  (pp.  5  and  8),  prove  only  that  neither  group  had 
learned  its  key;  that  the  N.  E.  A.  group,  which  had  more  to  learn  at 
the  start,  had  also  more  to  learn  at  the  close,  although  in  the  brief 
period  in  which  comparison  is  possible  they  learned  a  greater  number 
of  the  symbols,  which  at  the  beginning  were  unknown,  than  the  other 
group;  that  the  knowledge  gained  by  the  N.  E.  A.  group,  which  was 
based  on  an  average  briefer  acquaintance  with  their  symbols,  was 
not  so  stable;  and  that  the  tendency  of  both  groups,  with  their  im- 
perfect knowledge  of  the  symbols,  was  to  interpret  the  letters  of  the 
symbols  in  their  alphabetic  and  pronunciation  values. 


02  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

Experiment  A  does  not  prove  that,  if  the  instruction  of  each  group 
had  been  carried  to  the  point  of  reasonable  attainment,  the  relative 
efficiency  of  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  would  not  have  been  found  to  be 
in  far  higher  degree  than  its  relative  (and  indeed  only  apparent) 
difficulty  of  learning.  Experiment  A  does  not  prove  that,  if  the 
N.  E.  A.  vowel-scheme  had  been,  taught  from  the  point  of  view  of  its 
simplicity,  consistency  and  harmony,  it  would  not  have  been  found 
at  every  stage  easier  to  learn  than  the  Webster,  even  for  persons 
who  had  already  fixed  in  mind  conventional  associations  of  letter  and 
sound  that  are  repeated  in  the  Webster  key.  Experiment  A  does  not 
prove  that,  if  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  were  made  use  of  where  such  an 
alphabet  ought  to  be  used,  namely,  in  the  first  steps  of  a  child  in 
learning  the  art  of  pronunciation,  as  a  preliminary  to  reading,  the 
alphabet  would  not  have  shown  astonishing  superiority  over  any 
alphabet  of  the  Webster  kind. 

Finally,  Experiment  A  does  not  prove  that,  if  the  experiment  had 
been  based  upon  the  use  of  the  whole  alphabet  as  the  two  keys  repre- 
sent it,  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  would  not  have  been  found  superior 
even  under  the  extreme  conditions  in  which  the  experiment  placed  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  experience  of  language  teachers  in  Europe, 
and  in  Great  Britain,  extending  through  years,  does  prove  that  a 
rational  phonetic  alphabet,  such  as  the  N.  E.  A.,  is  by  far  the  easiest 
to  learn  and  to  apply. 

Some  further  points  in  Dr.  Whipple's  description  of  Experiment 
A  deserve  attention. 

The  experimenter  (footnote,  p.  5)  lays  stress  upon  the  fact  that 
the  portion  of  the  Webster  key  that  was  used  contained  two  more 
symbols  than  the  portion  chosen  of  the  N.  E.  A.  Those  two  sym- 
bols were  e  and  ng .  The  latter  could  not  be  misinterpreted 
by  any  English-speaking  child;  but,  as  a  matter  of  curiosity,  one 
wonders  how  Dr.  Whipple  got  the  children  to  distinguish  between 
the  Webster  symbols  ng  and  rj  .  If  the  tests  averaged  three  on 
rj  and  three  on  ng  ,  it  would  be  simply  equivalent  to  testing  the 
pupils  on  rj  six  times,  and  three  of  these  times  telling  them  what 
rj  meant.  As  for  e  ,  the  fact  of  the  peculiar  form  of  the  diacritic 
and  of  its  occurrence  only  once  in  the  list  of  symbols  and  in  associa- 
tion with  a  perfectly  familiar  suffix  -er  ,  accounts  for  the  ease  with 
which  it  was  fixed  in  memory.     To  make  matters  worse  for  the 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  63 

N.  E.  A.,  the  experimenter  wrongfully  opposed  this  Webster  3  to 
an  N.  E.  A.  new  symbol  of  different  value,  namely,  u  .  It  is  little 
wonder  that  the  children  had  increased  difficulty  with  the  N.  E.  A. 
u  .  After  Tests  1,  2,  and  3  had  shown  the  symbol  e  to  be  fixed 
in  the  pupils'  minds,  its  inclusion  in  Test  6  helped  materially  in  the 
good  average  showing  of  the  Websters  under  that  test. 

The  experimenter  discovers  that  the  three  new  letter-forms  in 
the  N.  E.  A.  key,  a  e  u  ,  proved  to  be  less  practical  than  the 
Webster  diacritics.  The  results  in  his  hands  were  the  outcome  of 
the  fact  (1)  that  these  were  new  forms,  and  (2)  that,  as  they  were 
presented  to  the  pupils  they  grew  in  number  to  nine  new  forms,  a 
a  ai  au  e  e  ei  u  0 .  If  the  pupils  had  been  properly  in- 
structed, had  been  led  to  notice  that  ai  au  ei  consistently 
stand  for  the  combined  sounds,  a  and  i ,  a  and  u ,  e  and 
i ,  respectively,  and  that  the  macron  involved  no  change  of  sound 
but  only  of  length,  the  N.  E.  A.  scheme  would  unquestionably  have 
been  found  easier  than  the  Webster.  But  with  the  new  symbols 
presented  to  them  as  members  of  a  long  series,  with  no  explanation 
of  their  fixed  significance  and  consistent  combinations,  the  pupils 
had  to  learn  them  as  every  one  must  learn  the  Webster  signs,  by 
sheer  exercise  of  memory.  It  was  a  gross  and  inexcusable  waste  of 
energy. 

Beside  Dr.  Whipple's  confident  assertion  based  upon  experiments 
covering  a  total  of  hours,  let  us  put  the  opinion  of  three  only  among 
the  many  who  say  that  diacritic  forms  should  be  avoided,  that  new 
letter-forms  are  always  to  be  preferred.  These  three  are  quoted 
on  pp.  15f.  above.  Their  combined  teaching  experience  extends 
through  a  total  of  more  than  seventy  or  eighty  years. 

Finally,  the  experimenter's  exclusion  of  the  symbols  for  the 
"obscure"  vowels  (cf.  pp.  12-14  and  51f.  above)  condemns  beyond 
defense  Experiment  A,  along  with  all  the  other  experiments  based  on 
his  partial  keys,  as,  for  example,  Experiment  B,  next  to  be  considered. 

Experiment  A  must  be  set  aside. 

Experiment  B 

Experiment  B  was  made  with  college  students.  It  is  assumed 
by  the  experimenter  that  these  students  had  no  appreciable  knowl- 


64  THE  N.  E    A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

edge  of  the  value  of  the  Webster  symbols,  and  that,  on  the  other 
hand,  all  of  them,  because  of  their  recent  studies  in  foreign  languages, 
were  inclined  to  interpret  any  given  symbol  on  the  European  basis 
of  values.  The  conditions  of  the  experiment  are  assumed  to  favor 
the  N.  E.  A.  key,  if  either. 

The  American  college  student  who  has  studied  one  or  more  for- 
eign languages  to  the  extent  and  in  the  manner  that  prevail  in  most 
schools  in  this  country,  can  not  be  found  who  speaks  a  foreign 
language  with  the  facility  he  has  in  his  own.  To  say  otherwise 
would  be  preposterous.  One  can  not  be  found  who  can  read  aloud 
even  simple  sentences  in  a  foreign  language  with  as  much  facility 
as  in  his  own.  One  can  not  perhaps  be  found  who  can  say  over 
the  foreign  alphabet  with  as  much  ease,  speed,  and  certainty,  as 
he  can  say  his  English  abc,  although  he  may  not  have  "said  his  abc" 
in  English  since  he  was  five  years  old.  Probably  one  can  not  be 
found  to  whom  the  letter  a  does  not  first  and  at  once  suggest 
the  sound  in  ale  ;  only  upon  afterthought  will  he  associate  any  other 
sound  with  it.  If  the  English  key-word  is  given,  the  afterthought 
will  not  come  to  him.  To  any  one  who  takes  up  the  study  of  a  for- 
eign language  after  his  native  speech  has  become  a  habit,  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  foreign  speech  remains  forever  left-handed.  There  are 
few  if  any  exceptions. 

The  conditions  of  the  experiment  with  college  students,  then, 
were  practically  the  same,  though  not  so  extreme,  as  of  that  with 
the  grade  pupils.  The  same  underlying  errors  of  method  vitiate 
the  experiment  and  weaken  the  significance  of  its  results. 

The  college  students  had  less  difficulty  than  the  grade  students 
in  bringing  themselves  to  accept  and  use  the  vowel  signs  in  their 
European  values;  but  they  were  still  subject  to  the  influence  of 
long-ingrained  opposing  associations  and  of  the  English  key-words 
before  their  eyes.  Since  they  left  the  seventh  grammar  grade, 
time  had  only  made  them  the  more  familiar  with  English  —  with  a 
wider  range  of  English  spellings  and  their  multiplied  repetitions  of 
letter-combinations  and  values  used  in  the  Webster  key.  To  con- 
clude that  European  values  lay  nearer  to  hand  for  them,  is  quite 
unjustified.  Every  day  they  had  a  hundred  times  as  much  experi- 
ence in  speaking,  reading,  and  writing  English  as  they  had  in  foreign 
language  work.     Dr.  Whipple's  own  figures  (in  his  Appendixes  G 


THE  N.   E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  65 

and  H)  furnish  full  proof  of  their  English  bias.  Compare  also  pp. 
42-48  above. 

For  them,  as  for  the  grade  pupils,  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  was  in 
some  of  its  elements  new  and  strange;  and  they  were  also  no  more 
properly  instructed  than  the  grammar  pupils  in  its  principles  and 
its  consistent  structure.  They,  too,  had  to  memorize  the  N.  E.  A. 
scheme  as  they  had  to  memorize  the  Webster.  The  results  for 
them  could  not  have  differed,  except  in  degree,  from  those  reached 
by  the  younger  people. 

The  greater  maturity  of  the  college  students,  and  their  partial 
familiarity  with  the  European  values  of  the  conventional  vowel 
signs,  made  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  relatively  easier  for  them  than 
for  the  grade  pupils;  but  their  maturity  was  equally  an  asset  in 
learning  the  Webster  key.  Their  one  N.  E.  A.  advantage,  then, 
namely,  their  left-handed  facility  with  European  vowels,  is  alone 
to  be  taken  into  reckoning.  It  can  not  be  assumed  that  this  was 
a  more  important  factor  in  the  results  than  their  ingrained  and  un- 
conscious predisposition  to  interpret  symbols  in  the  values  sug- 
gested by  English  alphabet  names  and  key-words,  combined  with 
their  greater  familiarity  with  symbols  of  the  Webster  kind.  These 
their  eyes  had  met  here  and  there.  They  may  not  have  stayed  to 
interpret  the  symbols,  but  the  symbol  forms  must  have  in  time  be- 
come in  some  degree  familiar  to  the  eye. 

The  one  help  that  the  N.  E.  A.  key  had  in  the  hands  of  the 
college  students  which  it  did  not  have  in  the  hands  of  the  grammar 
pupils  —  namely,  the  measure  of  familiarity  that  the  former  group 
had  with  European  vowels  —  was  not  enough  to  overcome  the  advan- 
tages that  favored  the  Webster  key,  namely,  the  fixed  predisposi- 
tion of  the  students  to  assign  English  values  to  letters  and 
combinations  of  letters,  and  their  inevitable  acquisition  of  some  famil- 
iarity with  Webster  symbols  in  the  course  of  their  previous  schooling. 
That  help,  moreover,  was  offset  by  the  wider  range  and  severer  con- 
ditions that  the  experiment  was  made  to  include. 

For  reasons  that  obtained  in  the  memory  tests  of  the  children, 
the  college  students  too  had  a  less  stable  hold  upon  some  of  the 
N.  E.  A.  symbols.  The  newness  of  those  symbols  must  have  time 
to  wear  off.  It  is  true  that  the  students  ran  over  the  list  of  symbols 
till  each  could  translate  them  without  error;  and  that  a  day  later 


66  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET 

the  procedure  was  repeated;  but  altogether  it  was  not  a  sufficient 
time  for  them  to  become  anything  like  as  f amiliar  —  as  much  at 
home  —  with  the  wholly  new  N.  E.  A.  signs  as  with  the  correspond- 
ing Webster  symbols.  And  so  the  N.  E.  A.  key,  as  compared  with 
the  Webster,  labored  under  a  measure  of  greater  unfamiliarity, 
which,  in  the  conditions  of  the  various  tests,  became  a  serious  and 
decisive  handicap.  The  two  keys  had  not  "been  brought  to  the 
same  stage  of  mastery."  "Brought  to  the  point  where  they  could 
just  repeat  without  error  the  special  symbols  of  the  key  they  had 
been  studying,  when  shown  in  chance  order,"  the  students  were 
not  "then  equally  prepared,  so  far  as  knowledge  of^he  keys  is 
concerned." 

That  associations  previously  fixed  in  mind,  and  freshened  dur- 
ing the  progress  of  the  experiments,  were  noticeable  determinants 
of  the  results  is  evident  from  a  study  of  Dr.  Whipple's  Appendix 
C;  hence  it  is  important,  in  attempting  to  interpret  the  figures  in 
that  table,  to  take  into  account,  so  far  as  Dr.  Whipple's  meager 
information  makes  possible,  the  previous  preparation  of  each  student 
for  the  various  tests,  and  the  probable  mental  activities  of  each  dur- 
ing the  eight  days  that  the  experiment  lasted.  In  doing  so  one  is 
at  Dr.  Whipple's  mercy,  because  Dr.  Whipple  has  given  data  so  in- 
adequate. A  phonetician,  one  with  even  a  limited  knowledge  of 
phonetics,  would  have  realized  the  vital  bearing  of  such  data  upon 
the  problem,  and  would  have  supplied  the  information  in  as  full 
detail  as  possible. 

Eighteen  college  students  were  chosen  for  the  experiment.  Of 
these,  four  are  reported  as  having  "no  knowledge  at  all  of  the 
Webster  system,"  and  one  as  knowing  "no  Webster  symbols." 
Does  this  mean  that  these  five  students  went  through  primary, 
grammar,  and  high  school  without  using  a  textbook  in  spelling, 
reading,  geography,  or  history  that  contained  a  Webster  or  some 
similar  respelling  of  new  or  strange  words?  The  Webster  system, 
we  are  told,  is  "in  common  use,"  and  the  adoption  of  the  N.  E.  A. 
alphabet  would  throw  out  of  use  the  mass  of  these  books.  And  are 
we  to  believe  that  these  five  students  had  reached  college  years 
without  having  opened  any  Webster  dictionary  from  the  Primary 
to  the  International?  The  long  series  of  Webster  dictionaries  has 
done  definitely  more  than  that  for  most  American  youths  of  about 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  67 

nineteen.  It  is  true  that  the  Funk  &  Wagnalls  dictionaries  have 
been  in  use  long  enough  to  have  served  these  young  people.  Per- 
haps they  used  the  Standard,  or  none  at  all. 

It  is  certain  that  every  one  of  these  students  who  passed  through 
American  schools  in  preparation  for  college  met  repeatedly  with 
Webster  and  similar  respellings;  that  they  imbibed  consciously  or 
unconsciously  some  knowledge  of  such  systems — not  as  "systems," 
because  keys  like  the  Webster  are  not  systematic — but  as  attempts 
to  indicate  pronunciation  by  an  assemblage  of  so-called  phonetic 
signs. 

Suppose  that  you  had  been  in  San  Francisco  several  years  ago, 
and  had  from  time  to  time  seen  a  number  of  Chinese  on  the  street, 
some  of  them  frequently.  On  the  first  day  you  would  have  noticed 
few  differences  in  their  faces;  they  would  have  all  looked  alike  to 
you.  But  day  by  day,  without  conscious  effort  on  your  part,  as  a 
result  merely  of  the  image  falling  casually  upon  the  retina,  one,  and 
then  another,  and  then  another  would  have  become  in  a  degree  fa- 
miliar to  the  eye.  If  you  were  now  asked  whether  you  know  any 
Chinese  in  San  Francisco,  you  would  say,  No.  You  had  never  met 
any  of  them  individually,  never  spoken  with  one,  never  learned  the 
name  of  one.  But  if  you  met  a  number  of  them  to-morrow,  mingled 
with  some  Japanese,  and  sought  to  make  the  acquaintance  indi- 
vidually of  the  company,  the  Chinese  faces  that  years  ago  became  in 
a  measure  familiar  to  you  would  far  more  readily  differentiate  them- 
selves in  your  mind  than  the  newer  Japanese.  You  would  come  to 
know  Wan,  and  Tu,  and  Thlee,  and  Fo,  as  men,  appreciably  sooner 
than  you  begin  to  single  out  the  Japanese.  In  like  way  these  five 
college  students  who  thought  they  knew  nothing  of  the  Webster 
alphabet  had  nevertheless  for  years  been  more  or  less  accustomed 
to  that  type  of  face — or  (typographically)  to  faces  of  that  type — 
and  when  the  time  came  to  learn  their  names  it  was  distinctly  easier 
to  attach  name  to  face  than  it  was  in  the  case  of  the  new  N.  E.  A. 
crowd  that  was  now  for  the  first  time,  and  in  mass,  encountered. 

Two  of  the  eighteen  students  had,  one  no  knowledge  of,  the 
other  no  drill  in,  phonetic  systems.  But  they  were  in  the  same 
boat  with  the  five  who  thought  they  knew  no  Webster  symbols. 

Six  of  the  eighteen  students  (Do.,  Sa.,  Mo.,  Wa.1,  of  Cornell, 
Mc,  Bas.)  had  some  specific  knowledge  of  the  Webster,  in  addition 


68  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

to  that  picked  up  (consciously  or  unconsciously)  by  years  of  use  of 
schoolbooks  and  dictionaries  in  which  Webster  or  similar  respell- 
ings  occurred.  It  is  far  easier  to  freshen  old  impressions  on  the  mind 
than  to  engrave  new  ones. 

Two  of  the  eighteen  had  "some  knowledge  of  phonetic  systems" 
(Wa.2,  of  Missouri,  Bl.)  and  one  "a  slight  knowledge  of  phonics" 
(Mat.).  Did  Dr.  Whipple  try  to  find  out  what  kind  of  phonetic 
signs  these  had  used  in  their  study  of  phonetics?  A  few  years  ago 
the  leading  American  phoneticians,  each  in  his  own  way,  still  em- 
ployed systems  of  phonetic  signs  largely  diacritic.  They  have 
reformed  that  now.  But  such  reforms  spread  slowly  among  hard- 
worked  teachers.  Until  Dr.  Whipple  finds  out,  or  (if  he  already  has 
the  information)  makes  it  known,  that  these  students  used  a  modern 
rational  alphabet  like  the  N.  E.  A.,  one  is  justified  in  assuming  that 
whatever  phonetic  symbols  Wa.s,  BL,  and  Mat.  used  were  largely 
diacritic  symbols  like  the  Webster,  or  else — what  would  differ  from 
the  Webster  only  in  degree — conventional  English  spellings. 

Finally,  two  of  the  eighteen  knew  the  "long"  vowels,  one  of 
them  the  "short"  also;  that  is  (presumably),  they  interpreted  a 
e  I  6  u  as  N.  E.  A.  e  i  ai  o  iu ,  respectively,  and  (one 
of  them)  a  e  I  6  u  as  N.  E.  A.  a  e  i  e  u .  In  other 
words,  one  of  them  was  prepared  to  give  these  ten  Webster  symbols 
invariably  the  Webster  value,  the  other  to  do  the  like  with  the 
first  five;  which  in  itself  gave  the  Webster  a  distinct  lead. 

Dr.  Whipple,  with  exacter  and  fuller  knowledge  of  the  circum- 
stances, may  topple  over  some  of  these  inferences;  but  it  will  still 
remain  true  that,  on  his  own  showing,  six  of  the  eighteen  students 
had  some  specific  knowledge  of  the  Webster  key,  and  that  all  of 
them  certainly  had  more  or  less  familiarity  with  some  of  its  symbols. 
Refer  again  to  Dr.  Whipple's  Appendixes  G  and  H,  and  see  to  what 
extent  college  students  are  predisposed  to  interpret  new  and  un- 
familiar phonetic  symbols  in  the  alphabetic  and  pronunciation  values 
of  the  letters.  Dr.  Whipple  is  there  (Experiment  C)  proving  that 
the  Webster  key  is  far  more  "natural"  (and  hence  nearer  to  hand) 
than  the  N.  E.  A.  key.  In  the  present  Experiment  B,  however,  as 
in  Experiment  A,  he  assumes  that  the  two  keys  have  equal  chance 
of  being  learned — that  they  start  on  an  equal  basis. 

With  Dr.  Whipple  laying  great  stress  upon  Experiment  B,  it  is 


THE  N.  E.   A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET  69 

necessary  to  question  closely  not  only  the  individual  preparation 
of  each  student  for  the  work  he  was  called  on  to  do,  but  also  the 
experimenter's  manner  of  conducting  the  tests,  and  of  using  the 
results. 

The  eighteen  students  (twelve  at  Cornell,  six  at  Missouri  Uni- 
versity) individually  met  a  director  or  instructor  five  times. 

(1)  At  the  first  of  these  sessions  (the  Preliminary  Session)  the 
student  "learned  the  twenty  symbols  that  were  common  to  both 
keys.  These  symbols  were  exhibited  in  enlarged  form,  one  at  a 
time,  and  sounded,  first  by  the  experimenter,  then  by  the  student. 
The  series  was  repeated  until  the  student  could,  unaided,  sound 
correctly  all  these  symbols.  This  preliminary  work  cleared  the 
way  for  the  learning  of  the  symbols  peculiar  to  the  two  keys." 

Apparently  no  record  was  kept  oj  the  number  of  repetitions  neces- 
sary, nor  oj  the  number  oj  errors  made,  in  this  learning  of  nearly  half 
of  the  symbols  in  each  key. 

(2)  At  his  second  session  (the  "first  Regular  Session")  each 
student  was  taught  "the  24  symbols  of  Key  1  (or  Key  2)." 

That  is,  nine  of  the  students  learned  twenty-four  additional 
symbols  in  the  Webster  key,  and  nine  learned  twenty-four  additional 
symbols  in  the  N.  E.  A.  key. 

In  this  session,  in  which  twenty-four  out  of  forty-four  symbols 
were  used,  a  record  was  made  of  both  repetitions  and  errors. 

(3)  At  his  third  session  (the  "second  Regular  Session"),  one 
day  after  the  preceding  meeting,  each  student  was  first  tested 
again  on  each  of  the  twenty-four  special  symbols  of  the  key  used 
in  that  preceding  session,  in  the  same  order  in  which  the  symbols 
had  been  first  presented. 

A  record  was  made  of  the  repetitions  needed  to  bring  the  student 
back  to  errorless  recital  of  the  values  of  these  twenty-four  symbols 
in  this  order,  and  of  the  errors  made  in  the  repetitions. 

In  this  same  session  the  student  was  next  tested  in  the  same  way 
upon  the  same  symbols,  but  the  symbols  were  thrown  into  chance 
order. 

A  record  was  made  of  repetitions  and  of  errors. 

Nine  of  the  students  were  now  regarded  as  having  "learned" 
forty-four  symbols  of  the  Webster  key,  and  nine  as  having," learned" 
forty-four  symbols  of  the  N.  E.  A.  key. 


70  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

(4)  and  (5).  One  week  later  than  his  first  and  second  "Regular 
Sessions" — (2)  and  (3)  above — each  student  again  met  the  in- 
structor, and  was  taught  twenty-four  additional  symbols  of  the  key 
that  in  the  "regular  sessions"  of  a  week  before  he  had  not  had  in 
hand.  There  were  two  sessions,  conducted  in  the  same  way  as 
the  Regular  Sessions  of  the  first  week.  At  the  end  of  these  fourth 
and  fifth  sessions,  nine  students  who  had  "learned"  the  Webster 
key  in  the  first,  second,  and  third  sessions,  a  week  earlier,  were  now 
regarded  as  having  "learned"  the  N.  E.  A.  key;  and  nine  who  a 
week  before  had  "learned"  the  N.  E.  A.  key  were  now  regarded  as 
having  "learned"  also  the  Webster  key.* 

Now,  Dr.  Whipple  in  Appendix  C,  summarized  in  Table  3,  p. 
14,  professes  to  show  the  comparative  ease  of  learning  the  two  keys. 
And  in  the  conclusion  drawn  from  Table  3,  and  announced  in  italic 
print,  he  says:  "Speaking  exactly,  we  find  that  the  learning  of  the 
Proposed  Key  by  college  students  exacts  41%  more  repetitions,  with 
85%  more  errors,  than  the  learning  of  the  Webster  Key." 

Here  lies  an  error.  The  figures  in  Table  3,  and  hence  the  per- 
centage calculated  from  them,  are  for  each  key  based  upon  work 
with  only  twenty-four  of  the  forty-four  symbols.  The  keys,  as  Dr. 
Whipple  used  them  (he  excluded  in  all  his  experiments  the  "ob- 
scure" vowel  signs)  each  contained  forty-four  to  forty-six  symbols. 
When  he  speaks  of  the  "comparative  ease  of  learning  the  two  keys,1' 
his  words  refer,  must  refer,  and  ought  to  refer,  to  at  least  forty-four 
symbols.  When  he  says  "the  learning  of  the  Proposed  Key  .  .  . 
exacts  41%  more  repetitions,  with  85%  more  errors,"  his  words 
refer  to  forty-four  N.  E.  A.  symbols,  but  his  figures  are  based  on 
tests  with  only  twenty-four  of  those  symbols.  The  result  is  to  falsify 
the  conclusion  by  raising  the  percentages. 

Suppose  you  have  two  fishing  rods,  each  in  two  parts.  The 
butt  of  each  is  two  feet  long.  The  tip  of  one  is  two  feet  long,  of 
the  other  is  three  feet  long.  Evidently,  one  tip  is  fifty  per  cent 
longer  than  the  other  tip;  but  one  rod  is  only  twenty-five  per  cent 
longer  than  the  other.  When  you  express  the  length  of  one  of  these 
rods  in  terms  of  the  length  of  the  other,  but  use  in  your  statement  a 
percentage  that  you  get  from  a  comparison  of  the  two  tips  alone, 

*  In  each  case  it  was  only  a  part  of  each  key  that  was  taught.  The  symbols 
for  the  "obscure"  vowels  were  excluded. 


THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  71 

you  double  the  percentage;  you  overshoot  the  true  figure  by  100 
per  cent  of  itself. 

In  exactly  the  same  way,  Dr.  Whipple  has  determined,  in  Experi- 
ment B,  the  comparative  ease  of  learning  the  two  keys.  He  does 
not  give  the  length  of  the  butt  that  is  an  essential  part  of  each  rod, 
so  that  one  can  not  correct  his  figures.  In  a  later  case,  however, 
Dr.  Whipple  has  repeated  .his  blunder,  namely  in  choosing  for 
Table  7  figures  measuring  the  errors  made  with  a  portion  only  of  the 
symbols  used  in  Test  3,  to  obtain  a  percentage  unfavorable  to  the 
N.  E.  A.  key,  and  then  applying  this  percentage  to  the  key  as  a 
whole.  In  that  case  we  have,  in  Appendix  F,  figures  for  both  parts 
of  the  rods,  and  we  find  that  Dr.  Whipple's  way  of  measuring  fishing 
rods  raises  the  percentage  against  the  N.  E.  A.  key  from  18.6  to  35! 
It  is  not  impossible  that  his  blunder  in  the  present  instance  (Table 
3)  had  effect  in  like  proporton. 

One  can  not  find  in  Dr.  Whipple's  report  of  his  experiments  an 
error  or  blunder  that  redounds  to  the  advantage  of  the  N.  E.  A. 
key.  There  are  several  that  do  not.  One  could  interpret  the  fact 
as  indicating  on  the  experimenter's  part  a  hostility  to  one  of  the 
keys  that  is  not  scientific  in  temper. 

To  return  to  the  examination  of  Dr.  Whipple's  method  of  con- 
ducting Experiment  B: 

"In  the  first  regular  session  [that  is,  the  first  session  devoted  to 
the  twenty-four  special  symbols  of  one  or  the  other  key],  the  ex- 
perimenter, in  the  first  reading,  taught  the  students  the  24  symbols 
of  Key  1  (or  Key  2),  by  showing  enlarged  symbols,  in  order,  one  at 
a  time,  giving  the  sample  key-words  (written  for  this  purpose  on  the 
back  of  the  cards,  and  hence  visible  to  the  experimenter,  but  not  to 
the  student),  explaining  the  sound,  and  directing  the  student  to 
pronounce  it. 

"The  experimenter,  in  the  second  reading,  then  repeated  the 
series  as  before,  save  that  the  key -word  was  not  given.  The  symbol 
was  shown,  pronounced  by  the  experimenter,  and  then  repeated  by 
the  student. 

"In  the  third  repetition  of  the  key,  the  experimenter  merely 
showed  the  symbols,  while  the  student  pronounced  them.  In  case 
of  error,  the  experimenter  promptly  corrected  it,  and  at  the  same 
time  gave  the  student  the  key-word  once  more.     These  errors  were 


72  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

carefully  noted,  so  as  to  furnish  a  record  of  the  number  of  errors 
and  of  the  symbols  that  occasioned  them. 

"If  any  errors  were  made  in  this  third  repetition  of  the  key,  the 
experiment  was  continued,  in  the  same  manner,  so  that  the  first 
session  closed  only  when  the  student  could  sound  correctly,  upon 
presentation  in  regular  order,  the  24  symbols  in  the  key.  The 
speed  of  learning  was  thus  measured  by  the  number  of  repetitions 
needed  to  learn  the  key  and  by  the  number  of  errors  committed  in 
the  process.  The  total  number  of  repetitions  includes  the  first  two 
readings,  in  which  the  student  followed  the  pronunciation  of  the  ex- 
perimenter."    (Whipple,  p.  12.) 

One  would  like  to  know  more  fully  just  how  these  sessions  were 
held. 

Were  these  students  summoned  to  a  room  together  (twelve  at 
Cornell  and  six  at  Missouri),  informed  of  what  was  sought  to  be 
done,  and  then  left  together  while  one  at  a  time  was  called  into 
another  room  for  his  "preliminary  session"?  Or,  after  receiving 
information  about  the  experiment,  were  they  left  to  go  where  they 
pleased? 

Or  was  each  called  from  work  in  a  class-room?  Or  was  an  ap- 
pointment made  for  each  at  a  time  when  he  was  free  from  class- 
room duty? 

At  the  close  of  the  "preliminary  session"  was  each  told  to  report 
for  "the  first  regular  session"  on  the  next  day?  and  was  he  told 
what  for? 

At  the  close  of  the  "first  regular  session"  was  each  asked  to  return 
at  a  given  hour  on  the  next  day?  and  was  he  told,  or  left  to  infer, 
that  the  next  day's  work  would  be  a  repetition  of  the  work  just  done? 

Did  any  student  know,  or  learn,  that  any  other  student  was 
doing  the  same  or  similar  work? 

Was  each  student  told  that  his  study  of  the  keys  was  to  be 
limited  to  the  private  sessions  with  the  director,  that  he  was  not  to 
look  for  nor  obtain  information  in  any  other  place  nor  in  any  other 
way?  and  did  all  the  students  observe  that  limitation? 

That  is  to  say,  were  there  time  and  opportunity  for  any  student 
to  inform  himself  of  what  he  was  to  do,  and  to  confer  with  any 
other  student  or  with  outsiders,  or  to  give  any  private  study  to  either 
of  the  keys? 


THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET  73 

Did  the  experimenter  undertake  to  prevent  any  student  from 
obtaining  or  receiving  information  outside  of  the  private  sessions? 
or  to  find  out  the  extent  and  character  of  such  information,  if  it 
were  obtained? 

These  and  other  questions  are  not  impertinent.  They  suggest 
themselves  to  every  one  who  realizes  what  precautions  ought  to 
surround  such  an  experiment. 

Five  minutes'  private  study  of  either  key  by  a  student  of  college 
maturity  would  materially  increase  his  familiarity  with  it.  Neither 
key  (if  you  leave  out  the  Webster  "obscure"  vowels)  would  be 
hard  to  learn. 

The  experimenter  will  say  that  the  chances  for  each  key  were 
equal.  But  they  were  not.  Aside  from  knowledge  of  the  Webster 
that  six  of  the  students  got  in  their  elementary  training,  and  the 
familiarity  with  the  Webster  symbols  that  each  of  them  might 
readily  get  from  the  easy  association  of  certain  Webster  symbols  with 
conventional  spellings,  the  Webster  key  itself  was  at  hand  in  every 
copy  of  the  1909  edition  of  the  dictionary.  The  N.  E.  A.  key  was 
not  in  print  except  in  pamphlets  hardly  accessible  to  these  students, 
though  an  approach  to  it  was  used  in  the  Standard  Dictionary. 
Furthermore,  in  their  general  reading  the  students  might  run  across 
respellings  of  the  Webster  kind,  but  not  of  the  N.  E.  A.  kind.  When 
the  mind  is  once  alert,  slight  impressions  become  significant. 

A  glance  at  the  records  of  these  students,  as  given  in  Appendix 
C,  suggests  the  question  as  to  how  far  factors  outside  of  the  limits 
assumed  for  the  experiment  itself  entered  into  the  problem  and  in- 
fluenced the  results.  The  records  of  six  of  the  eighteen  provoke 
the  question. 

The  students  (with  two  exceptions)  who  had  in  hand  first  the 
Webster  key  and  a  week  later  the  N.  E.  A.  key,  found  that  in  their 
first  trial  with  the  latter  (at  the  first  regular  session  devoted  to  it) 
the  N.  E.  A.  key  was  easier  to  learn. 

The  students  who  learned  first  the  N.  E.  A.  key  and  a  week  later 
the  Webster,  found  the  Webster  in  like  manner  easier  at  their  first 
session  with  it. 

These  results  are  not  without  explanation.  Six  of  the  students, 
however,  made  such  striking  records  that  one  can  not  help  putting 
the  question  as  to  whether  these  students  did  not  in  the  week  inter- 


74  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

vening  between  their  learning  the  one  key  and  their  learning  the 
other  inform  themselves  by  private  study  or  otherwise  about  the 
key  of  the  second  week's  exercises. 

Five  of  these  students  worked  first  with  the  N.  E.  A.  key,  and 
required,  to  "learn"  it,  a  total  of  81  repetitions  with  158  errors. 
A  week  later,  at  their  first  trial  with  the  Webster  key  —  that  is,  after 
having  seen  each  symbol  twice,  pronounced  each  twice,  and  seen 
each  key-word  once  —  every  one  of  the  five  was  able  to  pronounce 
the  symbols,  when  displayed  in  regular  order,  without  error;  and 
the  five  "learned"  the  key  in  a  total  of  twenty-eight  repetitions 
with  three  errors.  The  number  of  repetitions  is  exaggerated;  for 
all  but  the  first  two  repetitions  were  for  the  purpose  not  of  learning 
but  of  testing  knowledge;  and  the  tests  showed  that  the  key  was 
already  "learned."  To  this  there  were  two  exceptions:  Bas.  made 
one  error  with  the  symbols  in  regular  order,  and  one  with  them  in 
chance  order,  so  that  these  two  errors  forced  him  to  make  four 
repetitions  instead  of  two  to  "learn"  the  key;  Mu.  made  one  error 
with  the  symbols  in  chance  order,  and  so  needed  a  total  of  three 
repetitions  to  "learn"  the  key. 

The  sixth  of  these  special  cases  is  that  of  Mc.  Although  he  had 
had  a  little  drill  with  the  Webster  key  in  primary  schooling,  he  re- 
quired twelve  repetitions  with  twenty-one  errors  to  learn  the  key. 
He  was,  then,  no  phonetic  phenomenon.  Nevertheless,  a  week 
later,  at  his  first  trial  with  the  N.  E.  A.,  having  previously  read  it 
through  twice,  he  recited  it  without  error,  and  altogether  made 
only  two  errors  in  the  two  sessions  given  to  "learning"  it. 

These  six  remarkable  performances  can  hardly  be  attributed  to 
the  inherent  virtues  of  either  key.  They  force  the  question  whether 
scientific  precautions  guarded  this  supposedly  scientific  experiment. 

Another  question,  one  that  the  layman  may  think  unimportant, 
but  which  is  really  vital,  and  here  pertinent  because  the  experimenter 
several  times  shows  that  he  is  unfamiliar  with  the  phonetic  side  of 
his  problem,  is  this:  When  the  experimenter  gave  the  key-word 
for  (say)  the  Webster  symbol  e  or  the  N.  E.  A.  i ,  what,  ex- 
actly, did  he  say?  Did  he  say,  as  he  appears  to  have  said  in  Test 
3  of  Experiment  A  (see  p.  58  above),  "Here  is  the  symbol  for 
the  e  [giving  the  letter-name]  in  eve  and  the  i  [again  the  letter- 
name]  in  marine"?    We  should  like  to  take  it  for  granted  that  the  ex- 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC   ALPHABET  75 

pcrimenter  said,  "This  symbol  represents  the  vowel-sound  heard  in 
the  word  eve,  and  in  the  second  syllable  of  marine."  But  it  is  pos- 
sible that  the  experimenter  gave  only  one  of  the  two  key-words;  in 
winch  case  it  is  important  to  know  which  one.  And  if  both  were 
given,  which  was  given  first?  Were  they  presented  with  equal 
prominence  and  emphasis?  It  ought  not  to  be  needful  to  suggest 
these  questions  to  a  psychologist,  but  other  details  in  the  experi- 
ments prompt  them,  and  justify  them.  The  questions  apply  to 
five  vowel-symbols,  and  one  must  know  the  exact  words  of  the 
director  when  presenting  these  symbols  before  one  can  know  whether 
the  experiment  was  really  scientific,  unprejudiced. 

It  must  be  strenuously  emphasized  that  such  experiments  as  Dr. 
Whipple  undertook  can  be  properly  made  only  by  a  man  who  has 
the  training  of  an  expert  phonetician,  in  addition  to  other  qualities 
necessary  to  insure  unbiased  conditions  and  methods. 

Now  consider  the  tests  used  to  measure  the  facility  with  which 
the  respective  keys  were  used.  Keep  in  mind  that,  for  reasons 
manifold,  the  Webster  key  should  have  been  nearer  to  hand  and 
more  thoroughly  mastered  than  the  N.  E.  A.  Among  these  reasons, 
the  isolated,  independent,  literal,  absolute  superiority  of  the  Web- 
ster can  not  be  included,  for  it  has  not  been  demonstrated,  and  it 
is,  moreover,  rendered  exceedingly  doubtful  by  the  fact  already 
mentioned,  that  phoneticians  everywhere,  and  language  teachers 
abroad  (when  they  employ  a  phonetic  key),  use  no  key  of  that  kind. 

In  Test  1  the  foreign  appearance  of  the  proper  names  un- 
doubtedly helped  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet;  but  whether  that  help  was 
enough  to  offset  the  advantage  accruing  to  the  Webster  by  reason 
of  the  instinctive  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  students  to  interpret 
symbols  in  conventional  English  values,  can  not  be  told.  Both 
factors  were  real  quantities,  but  neither  can  be  accurately  measured. 

Test  2  put  a  series  of  nonsense  syllables  before  the  students. 
The  tendency  of  all  to  whom  English  was  native  was  unquestionably 
to  associate  the  syllables  with  some  possible  English  syllable — 
word  (or  part  of  word),  prefix  or  suffix.  The  tendency  of  all  to  whom 
the  Webster  key  was  the  more  familiar  (15  to  17  out  of  the  18  stu- 
dents) would  naturally  have  been  to  give  the  Webster  interpreta- 
tion wherever  possible.  The  results  of  the  test  were,  therefore,  a, 
foregone  conclusion. 


76  THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

Test  3  is  on  the  same  footing  as  Test  2.  In  his  summary  of  its 
results,  however  (Table  7,  p.  19)  Dr.  Whipple  falls  into  an  error 
more  grievous  than  his  wrong  handling  of  the  figures  reached  by 
Tests  1  and  2  in  Experiment  A — an  error  already  committed  by  him 
in  Table  3,  and  the  inferences  drawn  from  it  (see  pp.  69-71  above). 
In  the  paragraph  introducing  Table  7  he  says: 

"The  results  are  detailed  in  Appendix  F,  and  summarized  in 
Table  7.  In  the  detailed  results,  distinction  has  been  made  between 
errors  that  involved  one  of  the  24  special  symbols  peculiar  to  each 
key  and  errors  that  involved  one  of  the  20  symbols  common  to  both 
keys;  these  are  differentiated  as  key  errors  and  common  errors,  re- 
spectively. In  Table  7,  the  common  errors  have  been  disregarded. 
The  existence  of  a  considerable  number  of  them  gives  further  evi- 
dence of  the  difficulty  of  this  test  as  compared  with  the  others  that 
were  employed." 

Now  notice  closely  how  the  figures  are  handled.  First  we  are 
told  that  the  results  are  "summarized  in  Table  7."  Then  we  are 
told  that  "the  common  errors  have  been  disregarded  in  Table  7." 
(Table  7  can  not,  then,  summarize  all  the  results.)  Then,  in  the 
subhead  of  Table  7,  the  table  professes  to  be  a  summary  "showing 
use  of  the  keys"  (neglecting,  mind  you,  to  state  that  it  is  really 
only  parts  of  the  two  keys)  "in  phonetic  transcription."  Finally, 
we  have  the  italicized  conclusion:  "Speaking  quantitatively,  the  ap- 
plication of  the  Proposed  Key"  (neglecting,  mind  you,  to  state  that 
it  is  only  part  of  the  key)  "takes  12%  longer  and  involves  35%  more 
errors  than  the  application  of  the  Webster  Key"  (neglecting,  mind  you, 
to  state  that  it  is  only  part  of  the  Webster  key).* 

To  limit  one's  calculation  to  the  figures  one  obtains  from  only  a 
part  of  the  two  keys,  and  to  base  one's  percentages  on  those  figures, 
and  then  to  announce  one's  conclusion  in  words  that  apply  to  the 
whole  of  the  keys  as  used  in  the  experiment,  is  to  mislead  the  reader. 
If  done  knowingly  and  intentionally,  it  would  deserve  an  ugly  name. 

*  In  reality,  since  Dr.  Whipple  in  all  his  experiments  used  only  44  to  46  symbols 
in  either  key,  his  statements  here  are  so  worded  as  to  apply  to  even  more  than  those 
44  or  46  symbols;  for  the  N.  E.  A.  key  contains  47  symbols,  the  equivalent  Webster 
57  symbols.  Hence,  Dr.  Whipple  in  Table  7  takes  his  percentage  from  figures 
based  on  about  half  of  the  N.  E.  A.  key,  and  less  than  half  of  the  Webster.  That 
is  not  the  right  way  to  measure  fishing  rods. 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  77 

The  keys  are  intended  to  be  used  as  wholes,  and  as  wholes  they 
should  be  compared.  Let  us  revise  Table  7,  incorporating  in  it 
also  the  errors  that  Dr.  Whipple  calls  "common  errors."  Of  these 
there  were  made,  with  the  Webster  key,  53  plus  52  by  the  Cornell 
students,  and  26  plus  31  by  the  Missouri  students,  a  total  of  162 
errors;  and  with  the  N.  E.  A.  key,  38  plus  56  by  the  Cornell  students, 
and  19  plus  35  by  the  Missouri  students,  a  total  of  148  errors. 
Adding  these  figures  to  the  totals  that  Dr.  Whipple  has  inserted  in 
Table  7,  we  have  a  complete  table,  which  really  shows  "the  use  of 
the  keys  in  phonetic  transcription"  (excluding,  always,  the  symbols 
for  the  obscure  vowels) : 


Webster  Key 

N.  E.  A.  Key 

Institution 

Number 

Total  Errors 

Total  Errors 

Cornell 

10 

269 

316 

Missouri 

6 

156 

188 

Both 

16 

425 

504 

The  difference  between  504  and  425  is  79,  which  is  18.6  per  cent 
of  425.  When  one,  therefore,  leaves  out  the  errors  in  symbols 
common  to  the  two  keys,  the  result  is  to  falsify  the  percentage 
against  the  N.  E.  A.  key  by  raising  it  from  18.6  per  cent  to  35  per  cent. 

Further,  this  experiment,  like  all  those  that  Dr.  Whipple  made, 
does  not  admit  any  test  on  the  symbols  for  the  "obscure"  vowels, 
a  part  of  the  Webster  key  that  is  so  confusing,  chaotic,  and  obscure 
that  it  can  neither  be  learned  nor  applied  even  by  an  expert  pho- 
netician. This  feature  alone  of  Dr.  Whipple's  experiments  condemns 
them  as  grossly  biased.  The  responsibility  for  it,  however,  may  lie 
rather  in  conditions  that  were  at  the  very  beginning  laid  out  for  the 
experiments,  and  were  accepted  by  the  experimenter  in  ignorance 
of  their  bearing  upon  the  problem. 

Experiment  B,  like  Experiment  A,  is  of  little  scientific  value. 

Experiment  C 

"The  object  of  this  experiment  was  to  ascertain  to  what  extent 
and  how  accurately  school  children  who  had  had  a  certain  amount 
of  phonic  drill  would  interpret  in  the  Webster  Key  monosyllabic 


78  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

words  printed  in  phonetic  form  and  containing  a  symbol  that  might 
be  given  an  interpretation  in  the  Webster  Key  or  in  the  Proposed 
Key.  For  example,  the  phonetic  word  '  stil '  would  be  interpreted 
as  style  in  the  Webster  Key,  but  as  steal  or  steel  in  the  Proposed  Key. 

"A  second  object  was  to  see  what  pronunciation  would,  in  the 
absence  of  instructions,  be  given  naturally  to  certain  symbols  of 
the  Proposed  Key  that  are  not  common  to  the  Webster  Key." 

A  second  part  of  the  experiment  was  to  determine  the  action, 
under  the  same  tests,  of  a  "group  of  college  students  who  had  had 
little  or  no  formal" — that  is,  some  of  them  had  had  some  formal  — 
"instruction  in  the  Webster  Key,  but  who  had  had  on  the  other  hand 
definite  formal  instruction  in  the  pronunciation  of  one  or  more  for- 
eign languages  with  the  Continental  vowel  values." 

The  school  children,  of  the  Fourth  Grade,  "had  had  a  certain 
amount  of  phonic  drill."  Using  what  kind  of  phonetic  symbols,  if 
any?  That  question  is  vital.  How  thorough  was  the  drill,  and  how 
definite  and  fixed  its  results?  That  question  also  is  vital.  If  their 
phonetic  symbols  were  of  the  Webster  kind,  the  results  of  the  ex- 
periment could  have  been  nothing  but  Websterian.  If  their  sym- 
bols were  those  of  the  conventional  spelling,  the  results  (with  the 
words  that  were  chosen)  were  bound  to  be  almost  wholly  Webster- 
ian, because  the  children  would  have  attempted  to  translate  the 
phonetic  transcriptions  into  familiar  words,  or,  if  such  words  did 
not  readily  occur  to  them,  to  give  alphabetic  values  to  the  letters 
in  the  symbols  when  they  could  recognize  these  as  letters.  If  their 
phonic  drill  had  led  to  no  definite,  fixed  results,  the  children  in  their 
uncertainty  would  have  taken  refuge  in  their  knowledge  of  alpha- 
betic and  pronunciation  values.  In  any  case  the  experiment  was 
futile.  We  wonder  why — from  Dr.  Whipple's  standpoint — it  was 
made. 

The  experiment,  Dr.  Whipple  says,  "shows  that,  to  grammar 
children  at  least,  the  intended  interpretation  of  these  [N.  E.  A.] 
symbols  is  not  the  natural  one."  Natural!  That  was  just  the 
word  upholders  of  the  English  pronunciation  of  Latin  applied  to  it. 
The  question  with  them  was  not  in  what  way  the  Romans  probably 
pronounced  their  language,  but  in  what  way  is'it  easiest  for  English- 
men to  pronounce  it.  They  were  not  seeking  the  scientific  but  the 
expedient.     "Philological  skill,"  one  of  them  epigrammatically  said, 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  79 

"is  not  dependent  on  the  accidents  of  utterance."  He  spoke  as 
one  knowing  nothing  of  the  physiology  and  psychology  of  speech. 
Speech-growth,  speech-characteristics,  speech-history,  are  to  be  seen 
not  in  letters  but  in  sounds.  To  attempt  a  philological  study  of 
Latin,  without  approximating  the  Roman  values  of  the  letters  of 
the  alphabet  it  was  set  down  in,  is  to  read  a  page  of  Chinese  as  if  it 
were  English — from  left  to  right  along  a  horizontal  line.  The  En- 
glish pronunciation  of  Latin  was — from  the  point  of  view  of  Latin 
philology  * — preposterously  unscientific  and  absurd.  A  "phonetic" 
alphabet  based  on  English  alphabetic  values  and  English  spellings, 
is — from  the  standpoint  of  phonetics — also  unscientific  and  absurd, 
however  "natural"  it  may  seem  to  some  people. 

For  a  child  to  learn  English  sounds  and  their  combinations  into 
words,  by  means  of  the  conventional  alphabet  and  spellings,  is  to 
task  the  memory  outrageously  and  override  the  child's  instinctive 
sense  of  reason.  To  have  him  use  a  phonetic  alphabet  of  the  Web- 
ster kind — based  upon  alphabetic  and  pronunciation  values,  and 
put  together  without  regard  to  a  consistent  choice  and  use  of  sym- 
bols in  harmony  with  the  physiological  and  phonetic  interrelations 
of  the  sounds — is  to  sin  against  the  child  in  the  same  way.  The 
child's  eye  must  learn  to  know  a  series  of  symbols  in  part  unrelated 
or  pervertedly  related  to  one  another  and  in  part  also  inconsistently 
associated  with  individual  speech-sounds.  That  is  what  led  an 
eminent  American  linguist  to  refer  to  the  Webster  system  as  "ocular 
phonetics" — "run  mad,"  he  added. 

When  the  mental  attitude  and  action  of  a  child  thus  trained  is 
referred  to  as  a  test  of  the  "naturalness"  of  phonetic  symbols  new 
to  him — however  scientific,  fitting,  harmonious,  and  clear  those 
symbols  are — the  utterance  is  too  naive  to  be  worthy  of  issuance 
from  a  scientific  laboratory. 

*  Since  throughout  this  discussion  the  subject  is  the  use  of  a  phonetic  alphabet 
in  the  study  of  language,  the  term  "philology"  is  meant  in  the  sense  of  linguistic 
study.  It  is  often  extended  to  cover  the  study  of  the  literature,  life,  institutions, 
etc.,  of  the  people  who  speak  (or  spoke)  the  language;  and  such  study  the  "new 
method"  in  modern  languages  lays  proper  emphasis  upon.  But  with  this  part  of 
modern  language  study,  which  comes  after  a  reading  knowledge  of  the  language  is 
acquired,  phonetics  has  to  do  only  when  historical  study  of  the  language  is  needed 
to  throw  light  upon  the  past.  It  is  in  the  first  stage  —  the  acquisition  of  a  foreign 
language,  and  of  the  mother-tongue  as  well — that  phonetics  is  of  such  great  service. 


80  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

This  experiment,  when  tried  on  college  students,  some  of  whom 
have  had  some  "formal  instruction  in  the  Webster  key,"  and  all  of 
whom  have  a  knowledge  of  the  English  alphabet  and  English  pro- 
nunciation that  has  become  instinctive  and  is  incomparably  nearer 
to  hand  than  their  total  knowledge  of  foreign  languages,  can  have  no 
other  result  than  with  children.  All  that  can  be  said  of  it  is  that  it 
is  possibly  less  absurd. 

Experiment  D 

Experiment  D  is,  as  Dr.  Whipple  recognizes,  inconclusive.  It 
would  not  call  for  notice  if  it  were  not  made  the  occasion  for  char- 
acterizing a  certain  Reader  as  "pedagogically  unfit."  In  doing  this 
Dr.  Whipple  seems  for  the  time  to  speak  in  other  than  a  scientific 
temper.  If  Dr.  Whipple  takes  a  scientist's  attitude  toward  the 
problems  that  are  admitted  to  his  laboratory,  he  must  recognize 
that  a  Reader  intended  to  be  used  in  a  new  way — a  way  recog- 
nized and  adopted  throughout  Europe  as  the  most  efficient  intro- 
duction to  language  study  —  can  not  be  a  "fit"  instrument  unless 
in  the  hands  of  a  teacher  who  is  familiar  with  the  aims  and  skilled  in 
the  application  of  the  new  method,  and  who  is,  besides,  in  sympathy 
with  the  idea  and  the  principles  that  inspired  it.  The  difficulty  of 
overcoming  the  inertia  of  the  human  mind  is  natural,  but,  at  the  same 
time,  enormous.  However  willing,  and  however  competent  in  his 
familiar  methods  of  instruction,  a  teacher  may  be,  he  can  not  in- 
stantly adjust  himself  to  a  new  method.  And  having  perfected 
himself  in  the  new  method,  he  can  not  in  a  brief  time  demonstrate  its 
merits.  "When  a  man  has  been  teaching  for  twenty  years,"  says  a 
writer  on  the  pronunciation  of  Latin,  in  the  London  Times,  April  2, 
1907,  "his  mind  is  not  apt  to  turn  to  pedagogical  novelties."  In 
Die  neueren  Sprachen,  xiii,  349ff.,  one  reads:  "The  importance  of 
such  an  alphabet  to  the  educated  public  can  hardly  be  exaggerated. 
The  reason  that  many  scholars  do  not  understand  the  truth  of  this 
statement  is  that  they  never  had  the  opportunity,  either  in  or  out  of 
the  class,  of  testing  continuously  one  phonetic  system." 

The  "new  method"  has  established  itself  abroad;  it  has  proved 
its  efficiency.  The  old  method,  however,  is  not  inefficient.  Even 
"readin',  'ritin'  and  'rithmetic,  well  druv  in  with  a  hickory  stick," 
are  not  without  results.     But  that  very  old  way  led  to  an  enormous 


THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  81 

waste  of  energies  and  much  turning  of  the  milk  of  human  kindness 
into  gall.  The  American  ways  of  to-day  are  immensely  better.  But 
some  teachers  among  us  are  beginning  to  believe  and  to  demonstrate 
that  the  "new  method"  of  language  study  is  still  better.  It  is  these 
teachers  who  wish,  by  the  adoption  on  a  national  scale  of  a  rational 
phonetic  alphabet,  to  make  it  possible  for  American  teachers  to  fol- 
low their  European  and  British  colleagues. 

The  need  and  the  uses  of  that  alphabet  are  thus  stated  in  the 
"Report  of  the  Joint  Committee"  (p.  11):  "We  need,  the  world 
needs,  now,  without  further  waiting,  an  adequate,  simple,  precise, 
unambiguous,  and  generally  accepted  notation  that  we  can  teach  to 
the  young  in  school,  thereby  training  their  vocal  organs  and  leading 
them  to  pronounce  the  language  more  accurately  and  intelligently, 
a  notation  that  will  at  the  same  time  facilitate  our  learning  of  foreign 
languages,  and  the  learning  of  English  by  foreigners;  a  notation, 
finally,  that  will  enable  the  educated  adult  to  consult  whatever  good 
dictionary  comes  to  hand  and  find  out  how  a  word  is  pronounced 
without  referring  to  a  special  and  peculiar  "key  to  pronunciation." 

The  issue,  then,  is  too  important  to  be  decided  by  Dr.  Whipple's 
four  experiments.  Recognizing  that  the  errors,  and  the  unjustified 
conclusions,  that  are  embodied  in  the  published  report  of  these  ex- 
periments, may  be  ascribed  to  the  lack  of  training  on  the  phonetic 
side  that  the  experimenter  showed,  nevertheless  the  resulting  de- 
fects in  the  experiments  condemn  them.  The  fact  that  Dr.  Whipple's 
conclusions,  separated  from  their  context  and  naturally,  therefore, 
understood  as  applying  with  scientific  and  mathematical  truth  to 
the  two  keys  as  wholes,  have  been  cited  and  may  again  be  cited  to 
influence  opinion  against  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet,  has  made  it  necessary 
to  review  in  detail  his  published  report.  The  least  discrediting  in- 
terpretation you  can  put  upon  the  assumptions  the  experimenter 
made,  upon  the  exclusion  of  parts  of  both  keys  from  all  the  experi- 
ments, upon  the  application  of  percentages  based  upon  tests  with 
only  a  part  of  the  chosen  partial  keys  to  the  whole,  not  merely  of  the 
partial  keys  chosen,  but  of  the  actual  keys — must  stamp  his  work  as 
really  unscientific  and  without  authority. 

The  N.  E.  A.  key,  as  an  English  phonetic  alphabet  of  medium 
precision,  is  admirably  simple,  consistent,  and  scientific.  If  learned 
and  applied  in  the  way  its  simplicity  and  consistency  make  possible, 


82  THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

it  will  offer  less  difficulty  to  any  learner — child  or  adult — than  a  key 
like  the  Webster.  Because  much  of  it  is  new,  it  may,  for  one  in  whose 
mind  associations  of  English  sounds  with  English  conventional  spell- 
ings have  become  fixed,  require  an  appreciable  time  in  the  learning. 
But  when  one  is  destined  for  a  long  journey,  does  one  not  save  time 
by  staying  to  saddle  a  horse,  instead  of  starting  out  at  once  on  foot? 
In  fact,  with  the  Webster  kind  of  key  one  can  never  reach  the  legiti- 
mate goal  to  which  a  phonetic  alphabet  should  lead.  With  it,  one 
can  never  go  outside  of  English;  in  English  one  can  use  that  key  only 
as  a  pronouncing  key;  and,  even  in  this  limited  use,  it  is  a  make-shift. 
The  Webster  kind  of  key  can  not  serve  with  maximum  efficiency  in 
the  elementary  study  of  one's  mother-tongue,  nor  satisfactorily  in 
the  study  of  a  foreign  language,  nor  at  all  in  the  general  study  of 
phonetics,  the  basis  of  all  language  study.  Such  a  key  is  both  pro- 
vincial and  antiquated.  It  leads  to  a  railroad  station  at  the  end  of  a 
branch  line;  the  N.  E.  A.  alphabet  leads  to  an  international  railway 
center. 


APPENDIX  I 

I.  Joint  Committee  (Report  published,  1904,  by  the  Publishers' 
Printing  Company,  32-34  Lafayette  Place,  New  York). 

Calvin  Thomas,  Professor  of  the  Germanic  Languages  and 
Literatures,  Columbia  University,  New  York  City. 

George  Hempl,  Professor  of  Germanic  Philology,  Leland  Stan- 
ford Jr.  University,  Stanford  University,  Cal. 

Charles  P.  G.  Scott,  Etymological  Editor  Century  Dictionary, 
Secretary  of  the  Simplified  Spelling  Board,  New  York  City. 

O.  F.  Emerson,  Professor  of  English,  Western  Reserve  Uni- 
versity, Cleveland,  Ohio. 

E.  O.  Vaile,  Chairman,  Standing  Committee  on  Simplified 
Spelling  of  the  Illinois  State  Teachers'  Association.  Oak 
Park,  111. 

II.  Committee  of  the  Modern  Language  Association  on  the 
Proposed  Phonetic  Alphabet  [that  proposed  by  the  Joint  Committee]. 

E.  S.  Sheldon,  Professor  of  Romance  Philology,  Harvard 

University,  Cambridge,  Mass. 
James  W.   Bright,   Professor  of  English  Philology,   Johns 

Hopkins  University,  Baltimore,  Md. 
C.  H.  Grandgent,  Professor  of  Romance  Languages,  Harvard 

University,  Cambridge,  Mass. 
George   Hempl,    Professor   of   Germanic   Philology,    Leland 

Stanford  Jr.  University,  Stanford  University,  Cal. 
Raymond    Weeks,    Professor   of   Romance    Languages   and 
Literatures,  Columbia  University,  New  York  City. 
The  report  of  this  committee  was  concurred  in  also  by  the  Amer- 
ican Philological  Association  in  December,  1905.     See  (A.  P.  A.) 
Transactions  and  Proceedings,  xxxvi,  p.  xlv,  and  xxxvii,  pp.  xcv-cix. 

III.  Committee  of  the  Department  of  Superintendence  (Report 
published  in  "Proceedings  of  the  Department  of  Superintendence, 

83 


84  THE  N.  E.  A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

National  Education  Association,  Mobile,  Alabama,  February,  1911"). 
E.  O.  Vaile,  Chairman,  Oak  Park,  111. 
T.  M.  Balliet,  Professor  of  Science  of  Education,  and  Dean  of 

the  School  of  Pedagogy,  New  York  University,  New  York 

City. 
H.  H.  Seer  ley,  President,  State  Teachers'  College,  Cedar  Falls, 

Iowa. 
Melvil  Dewey,  Founder,  and  until  1906  Director,  of  the  N.  Y. 

State  Library  School.     Address,  Lake  Placid  Club,  N.  Y. 
Wm.  H.  Maxwell,  Superintendent  of  Schools,  New  York  City. 


APPENDIX   II 

Resolution  passed  by  the  Modern  Language  Association  of 
America,  at  the  annual  meeting  in  Chicago,  December  28,  1911. 

Resolved,  That  the  Modern  Language  Association  concurs  in  the 
opinion  that  a  uniform  fonetic  alfabet  for  key  purposes  in  general 
reference  books  in  English  is  very  desirable  both  from  an  educational 
and  from  a  scientific  standpoint.  We  hereby  express,  therefore,  our 
approval  of  the  alfabet  recommended  for  the  purpose  by  the  Depart- 
ment of  Superintendence  of  the  National  Education  Association, 
and  we  join  with  that  body  in  urging  its  general  adoption  as  rapidly 
as  may  be  practicable. 

Resolutions  passed  by  the  American  Philological  Association, 
in  session  at  Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  December  29,  1911. 

Voted,  That  the  American  Philological  Association,  in  hearty 
sympathy  with  the  movement  to  introduce  into  our  popular  works 
of  reference  a  uniform  key  alphabet,  approve  the  alphabet  adopted 
by  the  Department  of  Superintendence  of  the  National  Education 
Association. 

Voted,  That  this  resolution  be  not  construed  as  in  any  way  abro- 
gating the  Association's  approval,  on  December  29,  1905,  of  the 
original  and  more  scientific  form  of  this  alphabet.* 

Resolution  passed  by  the  American  Dialect  Society,  in  session 
December  28,  1911,  at  Chicago,  111. 

Resolved,  That  the  American  Dialect  Society  desires  to  express  its 
cordial  approval  of  the  adoption  by  the  Department  of  Superintend- 
ence of  the  National  Education  Association  of  a  fonetic  alfabet  for 
use  in  general  reference  books  in  English. 

*  Proceedings  for  1905,  volume  sxxvi,  p.  xlv. 


85 


APPENDIX  III 

The  origin  of  the  following  letters  is  explained  in  the  first  of  them. 
They  are  reprinted  here  because  they  furnish  views  of  the  Whipple 
experiments  in  part  not  covered  in  the  foregoing  discussion,  and  in 
part  expressed  in  varying  and  convincing  phrasing. 

Cedar  Falls,  Iowa,  Dec.  6,  1911. 
Dear  Sir: 

Doubtless  you  have  examined  a  copy  of  Professor  Guy  Montrose 
Whipple's  printed  report  on  an  investigation  conducted  by  him  on 
the  Relative  Efficiency  of  Phonetic  Alfabets. 

As  a  member  of  the  Committee  that  presented  the  Report  on 
"The  Universal  Key  Alfabet"  to  the  Department  of  Superintend- 
ence at  Mobile,  Alabama,  in  February,  1911,  I  desire  to  have  your 
views  regarding  the  value  of  the  Whipple  tests  as  well  as  your  reasons 
why  the  Department  of  Superintendence  should  not  reconsider  the 
action  then  taken.     I  wish  to  have  the  authority  to  publish  these 

views  if  I  desire  to  do  so. 

(Signd)        H.  H.  Seerley. 

Modern  Language  Association  of  America, 

107  Walker  Street,  Cambridge,  Mass. 

December  9,  1911. 

I  have  examined  Professor  Whipple's  pamphlet,  but  cannot  ac- 
cept its  conclusions  as  significant.  In  the  first  place,  his  results  are 
contrary  to  reason.  One  has  only  to  look  at  the  two  alfabets  to  see 
which  is  the  shorter,  the  simpler,  the  easier  to  write,  and  the  better 
adapted  to  mnemonic  processes.  I  am  convinced  that  any  member 
of  the  N.  E.  A.  could  learn  the  Key  Alfabet,  and  learn  it  for  good,  in 
fifteen  minutes.  I  wonder  how  many  could  learn  the  Webster 
Alfabet  in  as  many  hours.  I  do  not  know  it  now,  altho  I  have  used 
it  more  or  less  all  my  life.  Secondly  there  is  nothing  in  Professor 
Whipple's  report  to  indicate  that  in  presenting  the  new  alfabet  any 

86 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  87 

effort  was  made  to  point  out  its  logical  coherence,  which  is  its  dis- 
tinctive feature  and  the  fundamental  trait  that  distinguishes  it 
absolutely  from  alfabets  of  the  Webster  type.  To  try  to  teach  the 
new  symbols  in  the  same  way  as  the  old  would  be  comparable  to  an 
attempt  to  teach  a  poem  by  giving  out  the  disconnected  words,  like 
the  entries  in  a  column  of  a  dictionary.  The  acquisition  of  the  Key 
Alfabet,  in  the  proper  fashion,  means  a  training  in  the  actual  sounds 
of  our  language;  whereas  the  use  of  the  Webster  system  perpetuates 
misconceptions  as  absurd  as  they  are  pernicious. 

You  have  my  permission  to  print  my  views,  if  you  care  to  do  so. 
Very  truly  yours, 

(Signd)        C.  H.  Grandgent. 

Western  Reserve  University, 
98  Wadena  St.,  Cleveland,  Ohio. 
December  12,  1911. 

In  answer  to  your  letter  let  me  say  that  I  have  examind  Mr. 
Whipple's  report,  but  the  manner  of  making  the  experiments,  the 
short  time  in  which  they  were  in  operation,  and  the  apparently 
biast  tone  of  the  investigator  give  me  little  confidence  in  the  results. 
I  can  not  believ  them  true  until  they  have  been  tested  again  and 
again.  In  fact,  I  have  little  dout  that  the  weaknesses  of  the  method 
and  the  inaccuracy  of  the  results  will  be  pointed  out  in  time. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  Department  of  Superintendence  will 
stand  by  the  "Key  Alfabet."  Newspaper  gossip  and  a  publishers' 
war  are  not  reasons  with  thoughtful  people  for  changing  a  belief  once 
seriously  accepted.  No  important  arguments  have  yet  been  ad- 
vanst  why  an  attempt  should  not  be  made  for  some  reasonable 
progress  toward  uniformity  in  alfabetic  keys. 

Very  truly  yours, 

(Signd)        O.  F.  Emerson. 

Columbia  University, 
New  York  City. 

My  opinion  is  that  the  Whipple  "investigation"  is  quite  incon- 
clusive. 

In  the  first  place  the  tests  were  made  by  teachers  evidently  un- 


88  THE  N.   E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

trained  in  fonetics.     In  order   to  teach  fonetics  with  any  alfabet 
you  have  got  to  have  teachers  who  know  the  subject. 

In  the  second  place,  the  tests  were  made  with  children  who  could 
read  English  and  were  thus  already  familiar  with  the  so-called 
"English  values"  of  the  vowels.  In  order  to  give  a  comparative 
test  of  any  real  value,  so  far  as  mere  quickness  of  learning  is  con- 
cerned, you  would  have  to  take  children  who  had  not  learned  to 
read  at  all. 

In  the  third  place,  either  notation  can  be  learned  in  a  short  time 
by  any  capable  child,  and  whether  the  one  or  the  other  takes  a  trifle 
longer  to  memorize  is  of  no  importance,  if  the  one  is  really  better 
than  the  other  when  you  get  it  learned.  If  you  were  going  to  buy 
a  watch  to  last  you  a  life-time,  you  would  not  make  the  choice  turn 
on  whether  the  dealer's  shop  were  five  blocks  away  or  six. 

In  the  fourth  place,  the  Whipple  tests  do  not  employ  the  alfabet 
correctly.  He  leaves  out  the  symbols  for  the  unstr est  vowels,  which  are 
the  strongest  feature  of  the  N.  E.  A.  alfabet.  You  can't  spell  scien- 
tifically without  some  kind  of  notation  for  the  unstrest  vowels,  and 
the  Webster  notation  is  simply  chaos,  the  same  sound  being  denoted 
in  a  variety  of  ways.  Since  Whipple's  teachers  did  not  themselves 
spell  correctly  with  the  Revised  Scientific  Alfabet,  they  could  not  teach 
their  pupils  to  use  it  correctly,  and  any  statistics  of  "error"  based  on 
such  a  rank  sophistication  of  elementary  fonetic  facts  are  altogether 
worthless. 

The  one  important  question  to  my  mind  is  whether  the  Revised 
Scientific  Alfabet  is,  or  is  not,  a  better  tool  for  the  accurate  showing 
of  pronunciation  than  is  the  Websterian  notation.  On  that  point 
there  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  in  my  mind,  nor,  I  imagine,  in  the 
mind  of  any  one  who  knows  the  rudiments  of  fonetic  science. 

The  alfabet  adopted  last  winter  by  the  Department  of  Superin- 
tendence of  the  N.  E.  A.  is  not  perfect,  and  for  purposes  of  high 
precision  could  be  advantageously  changed  in  some  details  of  the 
vowel  notation.  But  for  medium  precision,  such  as  is  needed  in  text 
books  and  dictionaries,  where  words  are  respelled  to  show  how  they 
are  pronounced,  it  does  very  well  and  is  immensely  superior  to  the 
Websterian  notation. 

(Signd)        Calvin  Thomas. 


THE  N.   E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET  89 

Simplified  Spelling  Board, 
1  Madison  Avenue,  New  York. 
December  16,  1911. 

I  have  seen  the  pamflet  which  reports  the  proceedings  of  Mr.  Guy 
Montrose  Whipple,  an  instructor  in  Cornell  University,  in  experi- 
ments on  what  he  calls  "Relative  Efficiency  of  Phonetic  Alphabets." 
It  appears  that  Mr.  Whipple,  with  the  aid  of  another  teacher,  under- 
took some  experiments  involving  the  use  of  the  Phonetic  Key  Alpha- 
bet associated  with  the  name  of  the  National  Education  Association, 
and  of  an  alleged  fonetic  alfabet  consisting  of  the  Key  to  Pro- 
nunciation used  in  what  is  known  as  Webster's  Dictionary. 

The  experiments  were  begun  soon  after  the  action  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Superintendence  of  the  National  Education  Association  at 
the  end  of  February,  1911.  They  were  so  promptly  concluded  that 
it  was  possible  to  have  a  report  of  the  same  redy  for  use  by  certain 
book  agents  at  the  meeting  of  the  N.  E.  A.  in  July. 

The  report  shows  that  the  pupils  experimented  upon  were  few  in 
number  and  taken  from  few  sources.  The  assumption  was  that  the 
pupils  were  ignorant  of  the  two  alfabets  used,  and  that  the  alfabet 
in  the  use  of  which  fewer  mistakes  were  made  in  the  time  given, 
would  be  thereby  proved  the  best.  Among  the  students  experi- 
mented upon  there  were  a  few  students  of  Cornell  University.  We 
are  askt  to  believe  that  these  students,  who  were  deemd  qualified 
to  enter  Cornell  University,  did  not  previously  know  anything  about 
the  notation  used  in  Webster's  Dictionary.  As  this  notation  in 
various  forms,  all  bad,  has  been  used  in  most  dictionaries  and  most 
spelling  books  for  two  generations,  it  is  a  rather  damaging  charge 
against  Cornell  University.  The  fact  is,  that  the  notation  in  ques- 
tion, bad  as  it  is,  is  known  in  part  to  every  reader,  so  that  any  pupil 
of  fourteen  or  eighteen  or  twenty  years  of  age  must  enter  such  ex- 
periments with  a  prepossession  of  memory  on  the  side  of  the  Webster 
notation. 

Of  course  such  experiments,  made  so  quickly,  by  only  two  per- 
sons, with  only  a  few  pupils,  could  not  be  conclusiv  on  either  side. 

Yours  truly, 

(Signd)        Charles  P.  G.  Scott. 


90  THE  N.  E.  A.  PHONETIC  ALPHABET 

Qolumbia  University, 
New  York  City. 

For  the  Department  of  Superintendence  of  the  National  Educa- 
tion Association  to  abandon  the  proposed  scientific  alphabet  would  be 
on  a  par  with  the  relinquishing  by  a  government  of  the  metric  system, 
to  return  to  an  earlier,  more  cumbrous  system.  The  teachers  and 
the  pupils  of  this  country  deserve  the  best,  and  should  not  be  forced 
to  ride  in  a  medieval  cart  instead  of  a  modern  carriage. 

The  recent  tests  of  the  proposed  alphabet  and  the  so-called 
Webster  key  for  pronunciation,  conducted  under  the  guidance  of 
Assistant  Professor  G.  M.  Whipple  of  Cornell  University,  are  no 
tests  at  all.  When  a  philologist  or  phonetician  reads  this  pamphlet 
he  cannot  fail  to  wonder  that  any  professor  in  any  university  in 
the  world  could  be  brought  to  sign  it.  There  is  only  one  way  for 
this  pamphlet  to  avoid  doing  a  lasting  injury  to  Professor  Whipple's 
reputation,  and  that  is  by  its  being  promptly  forgotten.  If  Mr. 
Whipple  has  any  knowledge  of  the  linguistic  or  philological  side  of 
the  question,  he  has  carefully  concealed  the  fact.  His  experiment, 
as  he  performed  it,  would  have  been  in  place  a  century  ago.  To-day 
it  is  an  anachronism. 

Professor  Whipple's  tests  have  neither  a  beginning  nor  an  end. 
He  takes,  for  example,  children  who  know  how  to  read  in  English — 
whose  acquaintance  with  our  unfortunate  vowel  system  has  become 
fixed.  He  should  have  begun  with  pupils  several  years  younger, 
who  knew  nothing  of  reading  nor  of  our  ordinary  alphabet,  and  he 
should  have  continued  his  tests  longer.  He  should,  furthermore, 
have  had,  as  supervisors  of  the  test,  teachers  who  knew  both  keys 
equally  well,  and  who  had  some  special  training  in  phonetics.  The 
lack  of  these  advantages  is  not  to  be  compensated  for  by  any  amount 
of  good-will  and  honesty  on  the  part  of  the  teachers.  Would  Mr. 
Whipple  approve  a  test  of  the  metric  system,  as  compared  with  the 
English  system  of  weights  and  measures,  if  the  pupils  knew  only  the 
latter,  and  if  the  teachers  had  only  a  slight,  recently  acquired 
knowledge  of  the  former? 

The  relative  value  of  keys  based  on  the  English  sounds  of  the 
vowels  and  of  those  based  on  the  Latin  sounds  has  been  examined 
many  times  by  European  and  American  scholars.  Even  in  conserva- 
tive England,  teachers  and  scholars  would  doubtless  hear  with  sur- 


THE   N.   E.   A.   PHONETIC  ALPHABET  91 

prise  that  any  one  in  America  should  favor  the  Webster  system. 
There  is  no  society  of  philologists  or  phoneticians  in  the  world  who 
would  receive  otherwise  than  with  laughter  or  amazement  a  defence 
of  the  Webster  key. 

And  what  shall  be  said  of  the  manner  in  which  Professor  Whipple 
leaves  out  of  consideration  the  transcriptions  for  the  obscure  vowels 
in  the  two  keys?  We  are  dealing  with  symbols  for  popular,  everyday 
use — with  what  are  called  alphabets  of  minimum  precision.  The 
proposed  alphabet  offers  two  symbols  for  these  vowels,  whereas  the 
Webster  alphabet  offers  probably  eight  or  more  symbols,  a  system  so 
complex  and  impossible  that  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  human 
intellect  can  master  its  mysteries.  What  children  would  do  with 
these  confusing  and  illogical  symbols  can  be  imagined.  It  should  be 
added  that,  even  among  the  experts,  most  phonetic  alphabets  for 
minimum  precision  give  only  one,  or,  possibly,  two  symbols  for  the 
so-called  obscure  vowels.  Professor  Whipple  has  amputated  this 
entire  section  of  the  two  alphabets.  In  other  words,  he  has  made  his 
"tests"  on  a  part  only  of  the  two  keys,  ruling  out  of  consideration 
an  important  section  in  which  the  superiority  of  the  proposed  key  is 
startlingly  clear.  I  cannot  believe  that  he  knowingly  committed 
such  an  act,  which  men  of  science  would  be  the  first  to  brand  with 
infamy.     His  ignorance  of  linguistics  is  probably  alone  to  blame. 

Find  a  specialist — a  phonetician,  a  philologist,  or  one  informed 
as  to  modern  methods  of  teaching  English — and  you  do  not  need  to 
ask  his  opinion;  he  is  an  enemy  of  the  Webster  key  and  of  all  its  race. 

(Signd)         Raymond  Weeks. 


SOUTHERN  Bv 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CAL1F0RN 

LIBRAF 

4X>S  ANG&LES,  CALIF. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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